Tag Archive for: night shelter

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Winter Hope – Give Back Responsibly  –  help combat poverty & inequality

Mandela Day

Winter in Cape Town is a time in which poverty and homelessness become heightened social issues, because of the extremely harsh weather conditions. At the same time, the annual Mandela Day initiative coincides, taking place this 18 July, helping to bring hope and support to vulnerable communities.

Indigent people in South Africa are an inherent part of the cityscape, with hundreds of thousands of people homeless and living on the streets.

It is well-known that cash handouts are not a good solution for supporting people living on the streets  –  as these often serve to fuel the problem by funding addiction and other negative or self-perpetuating behaviour.

However, most of us would like to help in some way to combat poverty and inequality. For this reason, it’s important to work with known NGOs, nonprofits or charities, who have built social infrastructures and relationships that have longevity.

MES Cape Town - Mould, Empower, Serve

Mould, Empower, Serve: How City Improvement Districts are working with MES

MES Cape Town is a key partner in the mission to sustainably rehome the homeless across various City Improvement Districts. Their extensive network of outreach and social relief programs provides the vital reach and resources our CID needs. Additionally, their responsive help desk is always available to assist with the immediate and short-term needs of the homeless and unemployed community.

We work closely with MES to identify individuals for casual labour on specific projects. Their team actively scouts promising candidates, placing them with us each week on a probationary basis as one of our on-the-ground workers, fondly known as our “Green Ants”. For those who show dedication, we offer pathways for them to become supervisors and advance their training, making them valuable members of our workforce in a way that allows us to support their growth.

To ensure the funds generated through our partnership are used effectively, we pay stipends directly to MES, which helps cover their living expenses sustainably throughout their stay.

Winter Hope 2024

MES is running a WinterHope campaign until the end of July, in a mission to spread hope and warmth this winter, by gathering essential items such as warm clothing, blankets, and nourishing food supplies.

Visit MES @mouldempowerserve on Facebook to see causes near you to support this winter.

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Shelter Plays a Role in SWCID

Homeless persons who find refuge at the Somerset West Night Shelter, are given the opportunity to earn their board and lodgings by being employed to assist the SWCID teams, especially with cleaning tasks. The prerequisite is that they should be clean in terms of drug and alcohol consumption. 

enabling the vulnerable to earn helping with beautification 2

 

The services of the shelter, its staff and inhabitants are utilised on a partnership basis in these ways: 

  • For labour when necessary 
  • The resident social worker occasionally meets with the SWCID to determine needs, and sometimes walks through the CID to engage with people on the street in need of help or advice. 
  • The residents of the shelter are willing to engage in conversation with the PSO of Secure Rite to explain how homeless persons with their variety of problems and challenges should best be approached. 

Some of the accompanying photos show Law Enforcement officials being involved with staff from Secure Rite and with Public Safety. 

According to the SWCID manager, Ernst van Zyl, the metro’s Law Enforcement officials regularly contact them for operations to be executed in the CID. 

tidying and beautifying meeting with shelter staff helping with beautification 1 engaging with people on the street collaborating with security staff cleaning tasks cleaning and de-weeding cleaning and beautifying cleaning and beautifying 2 briefing of shelter clients beautification beautification and cleaning beautification (2)

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Partnership can benefit night shelter and SWCID

The night shelter in Somerset West, which has existed at the same address on Church Street for 30 years according to social worker Nicolene Andries, has in the past five years taken significant strides towards becoming better known to the community as well as more effective in its mission.

This can partly be ascribed to the partnership between the shelter and the Somerset West City Improvement District.

The shelter’s approach in recent times has been to ‘go big’ with stakeholders, role players and partners, says Nicolene. In the past one of the biggest drawbacks had been the fact that the community of Somerset West was largely uninformed or unaware of the shelter and its activities. “Since I became involved five years ago, the interest and involvement has however grown daily,” she says.

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One of the main advantages of the partnership between the SWCID and the Shelter is the job creation programme which not only offers hope to the shelter’s clients, but also holds a benefit for the community in the sense that Main Road gets tidied up and cleaned.

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Gene Lohrentz of Geocentric says the partnership with the shelter is based on Geocentric’s Social Work Action Team concept. He says the principle is threefold:

  •  We partner with the NGO and through them provide the opportunity to engage and refer homeless people who we find on the streets of the CID to a place of safety and assistance where they can access social services.  The NGO gives us the opportunity to refer them and works as a partner with us to get as many people off the street as possible

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  •  The next step is to deal with the question of how to support the process of getting people to remain off the street.  The CID undertakes to pay a contribution to the shelter fees of any referred person for the first two weeks, which gives the NGO enough time through their social worker to access the person and find help. Thereafter the CID offers SWAT opportunities, which in short is a programme where the shelter identifies persons who have started their rehabilitation to come and work in a team back in the CID area performing tasks such as general cleaning, urban maintenance and landscaping and gardening. The CID pays a stipend for these services to the shelter, who in turn pay their clients.  The clients have the ability to support their stay in the shelter, as they are now earning money to pay their shelter fees.

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  •  The last part of the partnership is the skills transfer that takes place from the shelter social workers to the CID patrol officers who walk the streets once a week: the shelter social worker helps the patrol officers to engage with homeless people and mentors the patrol officers in how to deal with these challenges.

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Nicolene confirmed that regular training or mentoring sessions were being planned, to ensure a better mutual understanding between the shelter’s clients and the CID patrol officers.

(Read more about the shelter on the website www.swnightshelter.org.za )

 

 

 

 

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