ACTIVITIES OF HOLY CROSS AIDS HOSPICE

Holy Cross is a Non Profit Organisation which was established in 13 July 2000, the founder of the organisation Sr. Priscilla Dlamini saw a need to establish a haven for the sick and the dying so that they may die with peace and dignity. Since she is a professional nurse herself, she was able to start by helping all the sick people who were abandoned by their families and hiospitals because of incurable illnesses like HIV/Aids. Therefore her dream was to build a secured place for them so that she could help them and monitor their progress.

Today after so many years of hardwork and determination, the organisation has reached so many people in the comunity from 5 tribal authorities. They all benefit differently from the organisation, we have home based care caregivers visit from house to house doing basic nursing care, referral of partients to clinis and hospitals and the children are referred to Home affairs for birth certificates and to Social Development for the application of support grants, community gardens for nutrition, identifying the sick and dying and orphaned children from child headed families, rendering the following services :food parcels, distribution of school bags, school uniforms,screening for support grants,advocacy for schooling,building of houses and distribution of clothing and blankets in winter. In-patient unit: offering palliative care,emotional and psychosocial support and bereavement counselling is extended to the patient and family members, spiritual care, pain and symptom control and complimentary therapy. Income generation project: beadwork, education and training, music therapy and sewing for income generation, Youth programme: visiting schools for behaviour modification, teenage pregnancy, alcohol and drug abuse,sports,HIV prevention,fertility awareness, distribution of school bags.

Care of the caregivers programme: grievances, retreats once a year, yoga and trauma healing exercises, individual counselling, spiritual care by spiritual counsellor once a month, music therapy burning CDs as hospice choir.

Day care centres for children in the hospice and in the rural communities: feeding, education, recreation ( make them play in order to bring back their childhood), transportation of children,psychosocial support to children and guardians/ parents, psychological assessment by the psychologists for those who are slow learners, school readiness.

Below are the pictures showing some of the activities that are taking place in the organisation.

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Sewing women Food parcels Community gardens

School bags distribution Complimentary therapy Home based carers.

Over the years Holy Cross Aids Hospice has been been playing a huge role in job creation because currently we have 53 staff members working in the whole organisation.

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Below is the continuation of activities at Holy Cross Hospice,

The Picture of the Holy Cross Hospice, creche and training Centre.

One of the households of the child headed family.

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A feeding centre in deep rural area. A house built for a family of children.

These are few of the wendy houses which were built by the organisation for the poor and child headed households/families, the last 2 at the bottom left is the creche in the deep rural area in KwaZulu Natal. This was just to bring services nearer to the people where there are no infrastructure. Anybody can see from the distance how much is the community benefiting from all the activities of the organisation.

The hospice is laso involved with disaster relief whereby the houses are burnt, flooded and /or swept by the storm. When a community member dies especially the poor family , the hospice is always supporting such families with food, transportation and at times to buy coffins for them.

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