NGO SUPPORT: CARE

For the last three years, Zoë-Life has worked with CARE (Christian AIDS Response and Education), a faith-based NGO offering a range of services to families infected and affected by AIDS. The project, run by volunteers, is a combined effort of the Presbyterian, Dutch Reformed, Methodist and Anglican churches in Durban North. http://www.imaginedurban.org/index.php/Donations-Database/C.A.R.E-Christian-Aids-Response-And-Education-Wellness-Centres.html ]

Founded in 2000, CARE's centres are situated in Greenwood Park and at eThembeni in Inanda. CARE assists clients in obtaining social grants, conducts voluntary counseling and testing, home visits and referrals, and provides food parcels and basic medication. CARE's training programmes cover nutrition, HIV and AIDS and gender issues, income-generation and food gardening skills.

Zoë-Life's journey with CARE has entailed providing mentorship and funding in two phases:

• Phase 1 focused on securing Department of Health site accreditation for the CARE centres, and capacity-building at site level to train CARE counsellors in HIV voluntary counselling and testing, TB symptom screening, CD4 screening and counselling, WHO staging, referral services, patient literacy, support groups and community outreach.
• Phase 2 involved Organisational Development with CARE's management committee, and giving technical support to strengthen CARE's site sustainability and operational performance. Over a year, Zoë-Life trained CARE managers in a 10-module programme entitled Sustainable Growth in an NGO Environment. The programme covered defining organisational status, managing in an NGO environment and project planning, essential leadership and management tasks, NGO governance and Boards, report-writing, monitoring and evaluation, fundraising, proposal writing, finance policy and human resources management.

Zoë-Life now provides a nurse counsellor to the CARE sites once a week. As we transition our programme delivery in a more consolidated form towards wider community spaces, CARE will assist Zoë-Life by identifying and facilitating access to networkers in the North Durban locale who will direct us to areas of need.