By Sian Morris | Program Manager
Hello Supporters,
Since our last update from this project life has dramatically changed for us, like most people!
COVID-19 brought an unexpected halt to our operations and upskilling training programs for the local women in our townships. Safety is paramount and following local government advice South Africa experienced one of the most strict lockdowns across the globe. Although this was a necessity, life in a township is overcrowded and even with lockdown rules it is almost impossible to practice social distancing which is a great concern as many people in townships are living with other serious life threatening conditions that make them extremely vulnerable to the virus.
Unable to train new women face to face and a pause on operations our team witnessed first hand large numbers of local residents falling through the gaps of government support. It was time to take action and make a change so our team supported some of the trained women to start making fabric masks for local hospitals and frontline staff that could not access PPE, our team donated 500 medical masks to a local hospital, funded the PPE for frontline staff in homeless shelters and shelters for victims of domestic violence, which was on a spike due to the lockdown.
As the country enters stage 3 of a 5 stage phase reopening the locals are concerned that with a spike in COVID cases still expected by September a second lockdown is imminent. Women and families in the community will not be able to financially survive another lockdown as thousands of people face extreme hardship to job losses.
Our team is excited for the day that we are able to begin to safely restart our projects and help women in Cape Town begin to restart their businesses, access employment or develop further skills. We know that the challenge post lockdown is going to be far greater than previously and with your support we want to ramp up our project and assist as many people as we can.
Although this has been an incredibly difficult time it has been heartwarming to see the motivation, dedication, love and support for the whole community has continued in our townships.
Throughout the lockdown we have heard daily stories about how women in the Cape Town communities are going above and beyond to help keep their families and communities going through this difficult time, from providing soup kitchens, to setting up support for victims of domestic abuse. The women we work with show time and time again their resilience, creativity and passion and we cannot wait to again be able to assist them in developing the skills they feel are necessary to help them achieve their goals.
It is very important that it is down to the women of the community to decide what support they feel is needed and that this is not be decided by an outside organization. Therefore, prior to the lockdown we met with groups of women in the community to discuss with them what further skills and courses they feel will be of benefit to them. The ideas and suggestions varied widely, from driving lessons to allow women to be able to operate their business more widely and freely, to hair and beauty courses to be able to run their own salon, to accounting courses to be able to better access jobs they were interested in. Whilst we may not be able deliver all the courses and skill development requested, it is incredibly important for us to continually ensure our projects stem from what the women and girls in the community feel they need to help them reach their goals.
Action Change is only made possible by you! We will continue to support our communities with you in our corner and as soon as we are able we will be reopening our projects and working with the community to bridge the gap for them to access new employment opportunities.
Thank you for your continued support to our project and charity, none of this would be possible without and I wanted to remind you that GlobalGiving have their annual 'Bonus Day' coming up this month on the 15th of July when your donations will be matched! If you can we would love to give all our projects a boost on this day.
With Gratitude,
SA Womens's Empowerment
Links:
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
