Crisis intervention

Starfish offers comprehensive care for orphaned and vulnerable children, with a focus on key areas for healthy development; health, nutrition, protection and education.

• Health: Mobile health clinics known as the wellness wagons provide check-ups, referrals, and community health awareness sessions. These clinics ensure the physical, mental, and social well-being of children, and keep them in school to maximise their learning potential.
• Nutrition: Food parcels and nutrition are provided to impoverished children, ensuring improved childhood growth, development and health. Starfish trains local partners to establish food gardens, providing nutrition, income and a space to learn about healthy eating.
• Protection: Starfish-trained care workers identify vulnerable children in the community and provide holistic care. From creches to vocational training for school graduates, this enables children to harness their talents and gain sustainable employment.
• Education: Starfish provides pre-school and after-school care where children enjoy creative educational activities and counseling sessions. The aim is to enable children to harness their talents and gain sustainable employment. Practical support such as schoolbooks, uniforms, transport, and meals is also provided.

Working with communities

It is widely accepted, based on experience of the organisations in South Africa and throughout the rest of the continent where large populations of AIDS orphans exist, that the best models of care for vulnerable and orphaned children are found within the children's communities and not in institutions.^[1]

For centuries, communities in Africa have helped neighbours during upheaval. But the huge number of children orphaned by HIV/AIDS and COVID-19 in South Africa needing support imply that community groups require assistance to constructively care for children. Starfish and partners provide:

• Healthcare and nutritional support.
• Daycare and pre-school for infants and young children.
• Psycho-social care for traumatised children.
• Homework support for older children.
• Safe and caring environments for children to play and socialise.
• Government grant facilitation for child-headed households and foster care families.
• Caregivers giving direct support for child-headed households until children can be linked to foster care families.

Building sustainable capacity

There currently exist thousands of Community Based Organizations (CBOs) that run to support orphaned children and adults at risk due to HIV/AIDS. These organisations deliver a multitude of education and health support services. However, donors and the government are unable to work with these CBOs because they have no formal framework, infrastructures such as bank accounts, or non-profit organisation registration. Staff and volunteers require training and skills around budgeting and financial management, fundraising, business plans and codes of conduct. The majority of staff and volunteers have also received little or no training in regard to care of orphans and children's rights. Starfish works to add to the capacity and impact of these grassroots organisations through the provision of training and mentoring, empowering communities to respond to the needs of orphans in their area in the long term. The aim is to develop a large number of stable and well-run CBOs capable of working with the government to ensure delivery of care, resources and services to children made orphaned by the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

The Starfish training and mentoring program focuses on CBOs that have reached a certain level of development, and require a program of training and support with a capacity-building approach to achieve their full potential and output levels. Training includes orphan care, children's rights, bookkeeping and donor acquisition to help the CBOs become sustainable in the long run.