My Placement!

Today I received my placement details for my South Africa internship! I will be working at a center called Nomzamo Place of Safety. The details were sent to me by Cross Cultural Solutions today and are as follows:

Nomzamo Place of Safety was established during the Apartheid to offer a temporary residence to the children of mothers who were arrested for contravening the pass laws. The babies could not be taken to prison with their mothers and an alternative placement was needed.

The 1976 to 1980 political upheavals affected the functioning of the facility and in 1980 the facility moved to Langa where a block house was secured at Zone 22- 60. Since there were no facilities for black African children at the time, the services were extended to accommodate other abandoned, neglected, orphaned and abused children as well.

The mission of Nomzamo is to transform and integrate the facility into the broader community by rendering an effective and efficient service for children under the age of 6 years that takes into consideration their special needs, ensures their safety and well-being, and reunites them with their families. Nomzamo aims to provide a place of safety for children who have been traumatized, provide care to children orphaned, abandoned, neglected, infected or affected by HIV/AIDS, and provide nursing care, spiritual and emotional support and education for orphaned and abused children.

Im extremely excited to be working with the babies but am a bit concerned that the skills I will be working on will be much more micro based then community organizing. They said I would be responsible for help implementing the program and making it run more efficiently, introducing new educational exposure to the children, assist with administrative tasks and 'domestic duties' ie cooking, cleaning and changing diapers haha. I will be speaking with my supervisor and contact at CCS about this to make sure I am not only having a wonderful experience but that my requirements are being met for school.

I can already see myself getting way too attached to these little ones so wish me luck! I will be updating often with all the adventures and what the placement is actually like :)

Peace - AM