Major New Study Shows Entrenched Epidemic - March 2012

The newly released Swaziland HIV Incidence Measurement Survey paints a stark portrait of the world in which Young Heroes works.

It confirms an unchanging prevalence rate of 31% of adults 18-49 - the highest on earth. Some good news results from the increased number of people on ART and decreased prevalence among younger people, but 54% of women ages 30-34 are infected, as are 48% of men 35-39. The same percentage of men did not know their status before the survey, indicating a continued reluctance to test.

Excerpt from Times of Swaziland Bush Fire Festival coverage ~ May 30, 2011
The complete article can be read here.

Young Heroes Thanks Newman's Own Foundation - October 2011

We are deeply grateful to Newman's Own Foundation for their new, generous grant of $20,000. In response to the ongoing economic crisis in Swaziland, Newman's Own has provided us with the funds needed to operate our sponsorship program for the year ahead, as well as ensuring continued sponsorship for dozens of children.

Actor Paul Newman was committed to helping make the world a better place. To carry on his philanthropic legacy, Newman’s Own Foundation donates to charity all net royalties and profits after taxes from the sale of Newman’s Own products. To date, Paul Newman and Newman’s Own Foundation have given over $300 million to thousands of charities around the world. For more information, visit www.newmansownfoundation.org.

Excerpt from Times of Swaziland Bush Fire Festival coverage ~ May 30, 2011
The complete article can be read here.

E600 000 Raised by Young Heroes Foundation via Swazi Challenge

With significant support from the Nell Newman Foundation; Tides Foundation; SAP South Africa; DoJiggy; and Bob & Bethany Millard, YHF's Swazi Challenge raised over US$92,000 (E600,000) for the kingdom's orphans.

The Challenge brought 12 Americans to the kingdom to build playgrounds and undertake a mountain bike ride around Hhohho. They presented the cheque from the stage at Bush Fire, furthering the partnership between the festival and Young Heroes.

The partnership began in 2006 when House on Fire Director Jiggs Thorne was approached by Steve Kallaugher, the creator of Young Heroes, who asked him to consider having an event at House on Fire to benefit the programme. Mr. Thorne, who had been developing the idea of a music and arts festival, decided that it should be staged to raise awareness of and funds for Swaziland's growing population of orphans. The Bush Fire Festival donates 100% of its proceeds to Young Heroes; it has increased its donation to Young Heroes each year.

Bushfire Headliner Nomfusi Visits Nkhanini NCP ~ May 30, 2011
by Shaun Raviv

On Sunday night Nomfusi was headlining the final evening of Bushfire, bringing the impressive crowd to their feet with her powerful vocals and the groovy beats of her band, the Lucky Charms.

On Monday morning she was playing with the kids at the Nkhanini NCP in Lobamba, singing and dancing with them on a visit with Young Heroes director Khulekani Magongo. No larger than a child herself and bearing a surprisingly youthful face, the 25 year-old singer from South Africa likes to tell orphans her story when she tours. After all, she is one of them.

Like many orphan children in Swaziland, Nomfusi has had a difficult life. Her father was jailed when she was just a baby and did not leave prison until a couple years ago. Soon after his release he was murdered. Her mother, Kwazibani, who the singer loved very much, died when Nomfusi was twelve of HIV-related illnesses. Her sister and the aunt who took over for her mother have also recently passed away due to AIDS.

When her mother died, she thought she would never recover. But her brother helped her get out of bed. “He said you can sit here and wait for people to help you,” says Nomfusi, “or you can stand up and do something.”

Rather than sulk, Nomfusi went to work, getting a scholarship to go to university and study accounting. While in school, she waitressed at a restaurant, singing in-between serving customers. She also sang at a local church, where she was discovered by a student of Philip de Villiers, now her manager. “She’s got such an inner strength,” says de Villiers. “She has more integrity than any person I know.”

Although Nomfusi is small in size, she is large in voice and, just as importantly, heart. Watching her play with the children at the NCP, it is obvious she feels at home with people from humble backgrounds similar to her own. She has shared her voice with enormous crowds at the World Cup celebrations and Bushfire, and has already traveled the globe, but she hasn’t lost her sense for what is truly important.

“Life is about choices,” she says. “You make a choice every single second.” Nomfusi long ago chose never to give up. “It’s all about finding hope somewhere.”

Before arriving in Swaziland, she contacted Young Heroes to arrange a visit with some of the organization’s sponsored children. “I trust that my visit will impact maybe one or two of the kids. It will stick in their minds and help them with their lives.” As she travels the world, and grows as an artist and person, surely Nomfusi will inspire countless more.

Five adventure seekers crossed 200 kilometres of Swaziland’s mountainous terrain in support of the Young Heroes programme. Read on.

Dr. Michelle Goes the Distance - November 13, 2010

The patients at the Baylor Center of Excellence in Mbabane came to know Dr. Michelle Adler as a source of care and compassion. What they didn’t know was that she was in training for a special way to mark the end of her stay in Africa: In October, Dr. Michelle ran the Soweto Marathon to raise funds for Young Heroes. While her goal was to raise enough to support three orphans whose school fees she had been paying, her friends, family and colleagues pledged enough to double that, ensuring that six children will be completely sponsored for the year ahead.

Speaking of her experience, she says, “I can barely climb the stairs, but now I can say I’m a marathon finisher. People were really supportive of all the runners. The kids wanted to "high-five" everyone going by. It was a great atmosphere.”

We at Young Heroes wish Dr. Michelle all the best in her new position at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, and we extend our gratitude to her and everyone who supported her run.

Young Heroes Foundation Announces Swazi Challenge – October 27, 2010

In 2010, Swazi Cycle saw eight bicyclists ride border to border across Swaziland to raise funds for Young Heroes.

In 2011, we’ll build on that success with Swazi Challenge, and we’ll welcome non-riders, as well. From May 21 – June 3, you can join us for your choice of adventures: while one group will be bicycling around the kingdom’s beautiful Hhohho region, another will be building playgrounds at orphan care points. And both groups will be there to enjoy Bush Fire, one of Africa’s most exciting music and arts festivals.

Join us for the trip of a lifetime. For more information, go to http://www.youngheroes.org.sz/http://swaziadventure.dojiggy.com/. If you'd like to register to join us, go to http://swazichallenge.dojiggy.com to sign up for the trip and set up your personal pledge page.

Bush Fire Doubles Donation – October 7, 2010

At the gala 10th anniversary celebration of House on Fire, director Jiggs Thorne presented a donation of E140,000 to Young Heroes. The money represents the profits earned from this year’s highly successful Bush Fire Festival.

Since its debut in 2007, Bush Fire has gained a reputation as a premier showcase for music from Swaziland and abroad. At the same time, it’s served as a call to action on behalf of the kingdom’s orphans. Donations in previous years have enabled the festival to support 40 children. As it grows in strength each year, this year’s contribution will extend those children’s sponsorship for another year and help another 40 orphans as well.

Young Heroes is continually grateful to Bush Fire, our largest donor in Swaziland, for its constant support. For information on next year’s festival, to be held from 27-29 May, visit http://www.bush-fire.com.

Second Sivivane Camp a Great Success - September 30, 2010

This August, our second camp for HIV+ children was held on the campus of Waterford Kamhlaba School.

Sivivane Camp is operated through a partnership among Young Heroes; Newman’s Own Foundation’s Association of Hole in the Wall Camps; Baylor Children's Foundation Swaziland,; and the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation. In addition to serving 86 children living with HIV in two five-day programs, another five-day training session prepared 20 staff members for future camps. The next one will be held in January.

Along with fun, games, and arts and crafts, Sivivane Camp helps children understand that they’re not alone. The program integrates lessons on the importance of healthy living, including adherence to medication; exercise; eating well; and finding supportive and loving relationships.

The lessons, relationships and strength the children get at the camps are reinforced all year long through monthly Teen Clubs – support groups administered by Baylor. Young Heroes provides transport costs so that all the HIV+ orphans in our program can attend these important groups.

Without Support, Orphans Leave Homesteads - August 27, 2009

Over the years, we have maintained that Young Heroes’ food and clothing sponsorships help keep children on their homesteads, in familiar surroundings with the support of relatives and neighbors. This benefit of our program has been borne out by recent events.

Due to recent donations, we’ve been able to sponsor a number of children for the first time since their enrolment in 2007. When our Family Relations Officers informed some families of the good news, they found that the children had left their communities to look for alternative places to stay. In most cases, they either went to a homestead where they work as herd boys or maids to get money for food, or to look for jobs in town. In a few cases, young girls left school after becoming pregnant, to obtain support for both themselves and their children. In one family, four young girls left home and went to stay in town, and have had no contact with their family since.

This makes it very difficult for Young Heroes to locate these children, establish their sponsorship and then monitor them. We regret both their plight and the need to tell donors that we cannot find them.

In other cases, we have lost track of children residing close to the border in communities such as Gege, Nhlangano and Lavumisa after they left the country to take advantage of free education in neighboring South Africa. By supporting a Young Heroes family, you can help us in our efforts to provide assistance to the orphans and minimize such cases of migration away from their homes.

We're pleased to announce that Newman's Own Foundation has awarded Young Heroes Foundation a grant of $17,500. This will enable us to support over 40 orphans with food sponsorships for the year ahead, and to continue our education program by offering scholarships in 2010. We're deeply grateful to Nell Newman and all the people at the foundation for making this grant possible.

Bush Fire, the annual arts and music festival that supports Young Heroes, continues to go from success to success. This year’s event, held from July 31 – August 2 at House on Fire in Malkerns, was the biggest yet. Despite rain on Saturday, over 10,000 people turned out to enjoy Johnny Clegg, Busi Mhlongo, Vusi Mahlasela and a host of other artists from all over Africa.

Along with donating a portion of the festival’s profits, Bush Fire enables Young Heroes to receive significant publicity online, in the press and at the event itself, where festival guests bought over $1000 (E8,600) of our merchandise – and even sponsored four children on the spot.

The Mhlanga and Matsenjwa families of Lomahasha were recently visited by their sponsor, Cornelia van der Kuur from Canada.

Lomahasha is a hunger-stricken rural community that borders Mozambique. It has a large number of destitute families who came to Swaziland as refugees from that country’s civil war. Eventually, they were allocated land and Swazi citizenship, but the area’s problems with absorbing this new population has worsened its poverty and hunger.

Cornelia brought clothes for both of her families and food for the Mhlangas, as they are the more destitute of the two: Zanele, who is age 11 and in Grade 2, stays with her unemployed grandmother. Both the child and her caretaker were delighted to meet their “Good Samaritan” in person.

Recently, 17 students from the St Mark’s High School Charity Club in Mbabane, together with two of their teachers, visited the Tsabedze family at Nkwene, whom they are sponsoring.

Club patron and teacher Ms. Nonhlanhla Nkambule explained that the purpose of the club is to teach the students about the importance of giving. This year, Young Heroes was suggested by Club President Zanele Dlamini. She said, “I’m very happy we have started working with Young Heroes to help other less privileged children. We hope that our successors will continue with the project in the coming years.”

On arrival at Nkwene, club members began working on a garden project. The vegetables grown will be shared with other families in the community through the local church. They also presented the Tsabedze family with clothes and then proceeded to the church where they played games, sang songs with the children and distributed fruit that had been donated by members of the club who couldn’t join in the trip.

One of Young Heroes’ strategies this year is to partner with other organizations so our children can receive services beyond food and clothing sponsorships. We’re  also developing ways of making monitoring more efficient through partnerships with NGOs and community-based organizations (CBOs).

 This has already led to a partnership with World Vision, which is helping to monitor our families in Lomahasha. We’re now in discussions with organizations such as COSPE in Siteki, to explore how a networking strategy could avoid duplication of services. Further, we participated in the Co-ordination Assembly of Non-Governmental Organizations’ workshop to promote networking to respond to HIV/AIDS crisis and in regional focus group discussions.

 This collaboration with CANGO and NGOs promises to yield fruitful results as it provides forums to network, develop partnerships and co-ordinate with other organizations. Through these partnerships, we intend to provide timely and effective response to the orphans we serve.

Doing good doesn’t have to be hard work – it can be fun, too.

Young Heroes Foundation has launched “100 Parties for the Orphans.” Our goal: to turn the Day of the African Child into a day of action on behalf of the children we serve by enlisting 100 people to hold house parties on or around June 16, 2009. Already, people from all over the U.S. have responded to the call. We even have one party pledged in Malawi!

For full information or to register your party, go to http://youngheroes.org.sz/dayofaction.php, and help us spread the word by telling all your friends.

In Swaziland, it can be difficult to identify child-headed households because Swazi culture has a tradition of  assigning a relative to act as parent to orphans. Even if the children take care of their own cooking, washing and other household chores, an adult is assigned , if in name only, to provide moral and social – but not necessarily financial -- support.

Unfortunately, this practice is unable to provide a safety net for today’s orphans because families are overstretched by the large number of deaths. Also, some  relatives move to live with the orphans for reasons other than supporting them. The reality is that orphans often lose their property to relatives, or are exploited by them.

One Young Heroes family has three girls who live alone. The eldest, who is 15 years old, has maturely assumed the role of parent. A community - based organization provides them psychosocial support at least once every three months and the nearest church helps out, but these organizations are unable to feed and clothe the children. Having seen the desperate situation, relatives have made a plan to have two young unemployed male relatives move in. They fear that if the girls will grow up and marry, the family will not inherit the home.
 Whether this idea will work for the children remains to be seen. Young Heroes monitors  such situations closely. As we continue to seek support for such families, we will also continue to highlight issues such as this, and advocate that communities protect their  children and provide needed support.

The 2008 HIV sentinel sero-surveillance in women attending antenatal care services in Swaziland reveal very disturbing news indeed: HIV prevalence among pregnant women has again risen to 42%, an increase of 2.8% from 2006.

This is of much concern to Young Heroes, for it means that Swaziland will continue to have a large number of orphans in the years to come. Their number has already reached 117 000, and is escalating daily.

"Existing data clearly indicate continuity in new infections among the young population (15 - 24) with sharp increases noted between the ages of 19 and 23," the government report noted. "This shows that younger women, in particular, continue to be vulnerable to HIV infection.

We have hope that with the improved services to prevent mother-to-child transmission, newborns will be HIV negative. But in any case, we continue work hard to keep the orphans alive through the generous support of all our sponsors.

With the ever increasing number of orphans in Swaziland, it is so gratifying that local companies continue to partner with Young Heroes to meet the needs of the orphans in the country.

This time, companies in the art industry have donated a number of art pieces to Young Heroes. Most of these employ women and men in rural and impoverished areas, teaching them to use their skills to earn some income to take care of their families. The artwork will be auctioned in the USA through the Young Heroes Foundation. Besides the partnership in combating HIV and AIDS, this is a unique intervention considering participation from the very poor and the time the artisans have taken to produce these fine art pieces. One these is a hand-embroidered throw which have taken 32 hours to make by 4 artisans with the love and thought of the orphans each step they made. Indeed, this is “Art With a Heart”.

Young Heroes is pleased to announce that as of this month, the stipend amounts that we disburse to orphan families will increase. Food stipends will rise from E114 to E140 per child per month, while food and clothing stipends go from E174 to E210 per child per month.

There were two factors in this decision. The first is the rising cost of staples, most especially food. The monthly amount that we determined with the help of World Food Programme in 2006 at the inception of Young Heroes no longer has the buying power to meet the needs of the children we serve.

The second factor is the favorable exchange rate caused by the decline of the South African rand, to which the Swazi lilangeni is pegged, especially against the U.S. dollar. In light of this, we’re able to increase monthly stipends without asking our overseas sponsors to contribute more: Sponsorship remains $19.95 per month for food and $29.95 per month for food and clothing.

This week, Young Heroes had the pleasure of taking a sponsor from the U.S. to meet his family in KaZenzile, a small community at Kubuta in the Shiselweni region. Terry Anderson arranged to see the Ntjakala family through the Young Heroes community contact, Make Simelane. Terry is sponsoring two girls, Tengetile and Hloniphile, for food and clothing.

Local Member of Parliament Bheki Mkhonta, eagerly joined Young Heroes to witness our interventions in his area. Among the families visited was the Mabuzas, in which a grandmother of 70 years of age cares for a four-year-old boy. Gogo Mabuza shares a dilapidated house with him and two other children – a common occurrence in this community, which has an HIV prevelance of 81%. Because of that, almost all the families in Zenzile are caring for at least one orphan. The children travel about ten kilometers to attend school at Ebenezar Primary or Ekuphakameni High.

Young Heroes has enrolled five families in this community; they are all getting some sponsorship. However, more help is needed as some of the families are only sponsored partially.

Young Heroes has 16 families enrolled in Nhlalabantfu in the Shilselweni region. All the children have lost both parents and some of them are living in child-headed households. Seven families have obtained Young Heroes sponsorships to date.  

During a recent site visit, the most common problem that families expressed was the unavailability of money for school fees. They reported that they’ve registered for the government bursary for orphans, but did not get the assistance. Obviously, though government and NGOs have done considerable work in the education sector, but more help is still needed. Our Community Contact, Mr. Nhlabatsi, said it is a huge challenge because school fees are getting more expensive each year.  

Some of the children were forced to drop out of school last year during the third term as they were periodically sent home to collect school fees. Seeing that there was no money, they decided to stay home. In some parts of the country, those who sat for their final examinations did not receive their results because they owe the school. It is uncertain that they’ll be allowed back for this school year while still owing.  Still we hope for better this year, as people press for the government to make children from child-headed families a priority in the bursary program so that they can be empowered to break the poverty cycle.  

In the near future, Young Heroes will post news of a pilot education program that we are starting in three schools, so that we too can help to address this vital issue.