Project: Elkana
MAMA: Rochè
Started in: 2000
Partner since: 2006
Location: Malmesbury, Western Cape
Special because: Children are helping in the garden and sometimes they top their own beans for diner.
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Elkana
Project: Elkana
MAMA: Rochè
Started in: 2000
Partner since: 2006
Location: Malmesbury, Western Cape
Special because: Children are helping in the garden and sometimes they top their own beans for diner.
In an area where the scourge of drugs, extreme poverty, a high unemployment rate, dysfunctional families, violence and crime affect most of the children, Elkana is a beacon of hope and offers a safe place in its residential care facility and drop-in centre where children can overcome challenges and develop the self-awareness and self-worth needed to navigate through life.
Our purpose is to transform the lives of children who live in severely adverse situations which negatively impact their positive development and future. They are in desperate need of meaningful interventions to prevent/stop the infringement on their human rights and to enable them to eventually lead happier and more balanced lives.
We are based in the beautiful, rural town of Malmesbury, which forms part of the Swartland Region in Western Cape, South Africa. The region’s picturesque landscape has various types of agriculture, such as wheat, vineyards, dairy and various other types of farming. It is difficult to reconcile this beauty and prosperity with an ugly, almost invisible reality of suffering children who are rendered vulnerable and at-risk due to various social ills such as extreme poverty, high unemployment, violence and crime, dysfunctional families, failed foster care and more.
Many young children, some in their babyhood and toddler years, have been severely affected by physical and psychological abuse of which sexual abuse rates highest, parental substance abuse, teenage pregnancies, early school dropouts, gangster culture, living on the streets and more. Historically, children have entered adulthood trapped within this vicious cycle, without hope for the future.
Elkana Childcare exists to break this cycle by implementing and practising a two-pronged approach which embraces a continuum of care from welfare to development as follows:
- IMMEDIATE SAFETY AND PROTECTION for 24 children aged 6-18 years in our Temporary Safe Care Residential Programme
- PREVENTION and EARLY INTERVENTION for 120 children aged 6-18 years through the provision of an After-School Care Programme.
In the year 2000, Elkana began as a small project for children on the streets only. The work resulted in the successful reintegration of street children back into communities, thereby drastically reducing, almost obliterating, the number of children on the streets of Malmesbury and some other Swartland areas. Today, we are no longer a project for children on the streets but have since mid-2000 evolved into a much bigger organisation serving 144 children who are in various situations of vulnerability and risk. Food, clothing, group and individual therapy, social services, education, medical, sports and recreation, educational and recreational outings, music and many more activities within the two programmes mentioned above are offered as holistic care for the healing and development of children.
Rochè Afrikaner
Rochè Afrikaner is Elkana’s MAMA.
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