NH Home for Women & Children

Centre for Women and Their Children
The HIV/Aids epidemic in South Africa has had a major impact on the countries ability to get on a sustainable path to development. There are 1.9 million orphans in South Africa and a half of these are attributable to the impact of HIV. Community attitudes to those infected with the HIV virus lag those found in western societies and women in particular are marginalised and subject to abuse.

Nkosi’s Haven has been in operation since 1999 offering holistic care and support for destitute HIV/AIDS infected mothers, her children, and resulting AIDS orphans (infected or not).
Nkosi’s Haven is named after Nkosi Johnson, the young AIDS activist who passed away on International Children’s Day on June 1st 2001, who dearly wanted a facility that would care for the mom and her child. He had been separated from his mom because of the HIV diagnosis and he never wanted that to happen to any other child. He also wanted HIV positive people to be cared for without discrimination or prejudice.

At the centre, all of the mothers and children (currently 160) live in total ‘freedom’. All the children attend private schools (in the bridging sense), receive all disciplines of therapy (play, remedial, occupational, speech, and hopefully soon art), and providing sporting lessons as well. The mothers are encouraged to build their capacity through various activities, during which, if leadership and initiative is shown, an internal position will be offered (such as cook, childcare worker, matron, resident manager etc.) Further, mothers ‘foster’ our young resident orphans, hopefully providing for some additional support in substitute for the loss of their own mothers.