Children of the Dawn: a hand up for vulnerable children in rural communities
Nabila Noor Mahomed is the National Project Manager at Children of the Dawn. As part of our series on Social Impact Superheroes, we got to interview her about her work to restore access to children in rural communities.
“Children of the Dawn has taken me to places I wouldn’t have been to. I have found myself hiking up to houses to see how families are doing. It has opened my horizons, says Nabila. The impact that Children of the Dawn allows me to provide is unexplainable.” After a long experience in research at the University of Johannesburg and within two National Research Foundation initiatives, Nabila found in Children of the Dawn an opportunity “to use the skills that [she] had gained and to express them in projects that would impact [her] country.”
Children of the Dawn is an NPO that aims to empower rural HIV/AIDS orphaned and vulnerable children into healthy, balanced and responsive adults who are able to make positive life choices. Since its creation in 2002, 870 children have been sponsored by the organisation.
Thanks to the progress of medicine, people with HIV/AIDS see themselves living normal lives if they take their treatment. As a result, the stigma around immuno-depressed patients has lessened over the years. However, discriminations still occur in rural communities where it is taking longer for the message to sink in. “Discrimination towards children may occur through being shunned by family, peers and the wider community, while others face poor treatment in educational environments. All of this can create psychological damages” states Nabila. To address this issue, Children of the Dawn emphasises the rights of people living with HIV and “makes use of community support systems to strengthen and effectively support children, to keep them healthy and ensure that they have access to the HIV services they require.” According to Nabila “one of the most devastating impacts of HIV/AIDS is the loss of whole generations of people in communities hardest hit by the epidemic. In this regard, it is often children who feel the greatest impact via the loss of parents or older relatives. Our main goal is to provide them with access to opportunities.”
To tackle rural development and make sure that all the children’s needs are met, five programmes have been implemented by the organisation in their twenty-four centres. This involves not only nutritious support, school help, emotional and trauma counselling but also educational, stimulating or leisure activities. “It seems that rural spaces are slightly overlooked when it comes to understanding the community needs. For the most part, children need a lot of emotional attention, says Nabila. We have some children who have been abused. Some didn’t eat. Some are just really angry. When you are able to provide children with a safe space that is open to conversation, a space where they have a meal, where they have friends, participate in activities, you can actually start to “rebuild” the child.” One of the programmes also focuses on guidance for teenagers aged 14 and older: “Through a variety of modules, we create experiential learning experiences on which our teens can build themselves and get the tools to make position-life decisions”, explains Nabila. Later on, for the beneficiaries in tertiary or technical institutions, Children of the Dawn offers an on-going student mentorship and financial assistance to “bridge the gap between students from universities and those in colleges.” In total, the programmes impact 3550 people daily, as families also benefit from it.
Children of the Dawn: the name says it all
Thanks to Children of the Dawn’s programmes, beneficiaries are able to rise like the sun. Sihle’s story is a good illustration of this statement. Sihle, a proud young Zulu man from Eshowe, joined Children of the Dawn as a single orphaned eight-year-old boy in 2008. He and his family received care and support from the organisation. When Sihle reached his teenage years, he started acting out of character and was disrespectful to people. Children of the Dawn caregivers followed up on him to ensure he would not throw his life away. In 2013, Children of the Dawn introduced rope skipping in its sports programme. This was a turning point for Sihle. Rope skipping became a new passion that put him back on the right track. At the age of eighteen, he enrolled in Durban University of Technology for a Diploma in Information Sciences. In 2019, he was invited to the Battle of the Year, an international rope skipping tournament hosted in Mozambique. He represented Children of the Dawn and came back home with a silver medal.
Although Children of the Dawn has such a hopeful narrative and has seen many successes over the years, Nabila feels that there is still much to do before she can proudly look back at her achievements: “I’m constantly working at getting things better. I think when we have streamlined the cases of AIDS, of neglect and abuse, of poverty in my country, then I would feel proud. Now, I find myself in a space where I am working towards a greater goal than myself. That’s I think where my mind is.” Such a mindset is definitely one of a social impact superhero.
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