I want to spend some time talking about Masoyi Home-based Care. These are people I see everyday. They have the biggest hearts for doing what Jesus did and I am inspired by them daily.
Masoyi Home-Based care is a network of care given to people within the community of Masoyi. HIV/Aids has taken control of this community, this country, and this continent and seeing this devastation, Hands at Work recognized the need to care for the individuals left to die, allowing them to die with dignity. Volunteers within the church identified people in the community that need care and a care-giver was assigned to them. This person visits their patients every week, providing medication, food, prayer, love, and hope. As these patients began to die, children were going to be orphaned and left with no one to care for them. Masoyi HBC promised to take care of these children. So now, not only do volunteers visit homes of sick patients everyday, they also visit the homes of child-headed households, ensuring they are healthy and have the basic needs (food, school uniforms, blankets, etc).
Masoyi is having trouble right now. They were strongly attached to Hands at Work in the beginning, but the goal was for Masoyi HBC to be independent, running on its own strength and its own people. But lately, donors that they depended on to provide money in order to buy food for all the children have stopped giving (due to expired contracts). Now they are left to figure out how to feed thousands of children that are in their care. They budget R20 000 (approximately $2500) a month to feed all these children (although that still isn’t enough). Because the donors have backed out, the incentives Masoyi could provide to its volunteers has been cut off. These are volunteers with families to take care of. They devote their days to caring for the sick and orphaned. Without these incentives (which still aren’t enough to survive off of) they have nothing to provide for their families. Now many volunteers are leaving to find jobs. Where there used to be a team of 12 volunteers for a certain area, there is now 5 or 6. With fewer volunteers, fewer people can receive care. This is saddening. I don’t have a solution. All I know is my heart breaks when I see the exhausted volunteers that are still devoting their time and my heart breaks when I see children that now don’t get food.
1 comment:
hi! i recently went to south africa on a mission trip to work in the masoyi community and give the orphans new shoes. we stayed at the africa school of missions. (im not sure if you know where that is or not) but some people in our group got to go with nurses that help out with masoyi home based care. the things we got to see where as you said "enormous". it was sooo moving to see the things that they have to deal with every day.
do you work with the masoyi home based care?
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