Wola Nani

Wola Nani’s mandate is to impart information about HIV/AIDS so as to dispel myths and encourage prevention and safer sex practices as well as to provide training and support for people living with HIV so that they are able to find suitable employment and meet their families’ basic needs for survival.

Central to Wola Nani's HIV/AIDS prevention efforts is the Condom Bashes programme. Wola Nani staff from the Family and Community Support Centre set up a "road show style site" at a high-traffic, open-air location within the townships in busy areas such as bars, taxi ranks, bus and train terminals. At this heavy human traffic location, HIV/AIDS information leaflets are distributed while staff coordinate question/answer games, songs and role playing sessions, and discuss issues related to the prevention of HIV/AIDS, care for those who suffer with it, and issues relevant within the lives of those affected by it. A public address (PA) system aids this communication. Organisers believe that this combination of prevention information and song and game will stir interest amongst community members, and that they can absorb vital lessons about HIV/AIDS from such impromptu and informal moments. In addition, since the education is relayed through the preferred means of oral tradition, information is accessible and able to be clarified or detailed as needed.

Another major strategy for HIV/AIDS support is the various training and income generation programmes offered at Wola Nani. "Clients are engaged in low impact craft activities, in which they can be trained quickly and effectively and the products easily made at home." The products include beaded bangles and AIDS ribbons to papier mache containers and picture frames, which in turn, are marketed and sold at nationwide outlets and Wola Nani’s shop at the central Cape Town office. According to the organisers, "making the crafts gives a sense of achievement along with providing therapeutic value and may even be continued should their health deteriorate, allowing a desperately needed source of income to continue. The project provides skills and a regular, sustainable income but more importantly it facilitates empowerment through the clients' ability to support themselves and their families."

While training the individual in an income-generating capacity is a strategy for supporting that individual and his/her family, Wola Nani offers an arguably more sustainable strategy that involves training clients as "therapeutic counsellors." These lay counsellors provide guidance and support in the administration of (and adherence to) anti-retroviral (ARV) treatment regimes. Subsequently, they can be contracted by Wola Nani to conduct home visits and offer counselling services to peers living with HIV/AIDS. (For example, they can facilitate discussion of the client's status to household members, provide specific information, and encourage de-stigmatisation of HIV/AIDS.) In this way, organisers hope to empower clients not only with a marketable skill, but to train them to provide guidance and support to other individuals experiencing hardships as a result of their HIV-positive status. As a result of this component of the programme, Wola Nani's therapeutic counsellors were recruited by the Red Cross Children’s Hospital for the establishment of a resource centre for HIV/AIDS information.

Though Wola Nani focuses on interpersonal communication, the organisation has also created a printed publication to document its strategies. A counsellors' guide called "Antiretroviral Treatment Literacy for Caregivers of Children on Treatment" was published in 2006.

HIV/AIDS, Economic Development.

"Focusing on the needs of HIV+ women and their children, Wola Nani’s services aim to ease the burden of HIV by enabling people living with the virus to respond positively and attain the skills to develop their own coping strategies. Through Wola Nani’s outreach programme of AIDS education workshops and awareness initiatives, staff work within the township communities to raise awareness, provide education and disseminate information. In this way, Wola Nani works towards improving community acceptance of people with HIV and AIDS, combating discrimination and developing community based responses to prevention, support and care."