Empower Growth
Be Part’s vision is to empower local communities through creating a sense of awareness of their own health and wellbeing. Our long-standing and good relationships means we have the credibility to address behavioural issues relating to the spreading and prevention of illness, especially HIV and TB, and to endeavour to develop new strategies to affect change through early and ongoing HIV testing and TB prevention.
Be Part focuses on the King 3/4 areas of social responsibility, economic prosperity and sustainable development - and how they inform an opportunity to effect beneficial change in the community. Providing community services is evidence of Be Part’s social responsibility ethos - but these services also foster good relations with the local community on whom the Centre’s work and wellbeing depend.
Our community programmes are partially funded by our research division, as well as by donor monies.
Our Community Programmes
01.
After Hours Clinic
The clinic focuses on working people - encouraging them to test for HIV and to remain compliant with antiretroviral therapy.
Since 2008, more than 11,000 people have been tested and >700 people who tested HIV-positive have been supported to remain in care.
02.
Material & Financial
Support
Nutrition and clothing are provided to trial participants in need.
We also provide financial sponsorship each year for local community projects which are in line with Be Part’s main aims.
03.
Yoluntu Youth
Programme
This comprises weekly life skills sessions for its school-going members as well as other services.
More information can be found below.
04.
Counselling Services
On Wednesdays, from 10:00 till 17:00, we provide free counselling to our staff and our trial participants, members of the Yoluntu Youth Programme and their parents.
We are also currently running two support groups. More information can be found here.
05.
Specific Health Services / Care
Contraceptives and acute care intervention are offered to trial participants in particular, and sometimes more broadly.
Consent has been provided for all individuals under 18 featured in our photos, ensuring their participation was voluntary and respectful of their rights.
Yoluntu Youth Programme
Be Part runs a holistic Youth Programme to contribute to realising the organisation’s goal of developing ‘well-informed adolescents who are better able to make realistic and informed choices that minimise personal risk and optimise their social, physical and mental wellbeing’.
The programme comprises a number of aspects.
The cornerstone is the Yoluntu Youth Group - whose aim is to provide a continuous safe, developmental place for school learners from 12 – 20 years old. It includes, among others, regular life skills sessions, a space to do their homework, informative recreational games which address a range of life skills and post-school information to optimise the chances of their making good choices now and about their post-school lives.
Be Part continues to facilitate access to post-school education opportunities for a small group of long-term trial participants living with chronic illness. The organisation also promotes careers within the health and allied services to youth who are interested – and provides insights into, and support for, training to do so.
The Youth Programme offers access to counselling to provide support to young people who have circumstances or issues that trouble them – or whose mental health is not optimal. Offered weekly by a contracted NGO specialising in youth and family psycho-social support, this is also available to their parents and to trial participants, as needed.
Every year, Be Part sponsors a youth activity in Mbekweni as a way of directly supporting the well-being of youth. These are implemented in ways that provide visible evidence of the organisation’s support for youth in the area and provide fora for health promotion and recruitment for clinical trials.
The Youth Programme works with the Gentle Man Project – an externally run initiative which aims to prepare young men for traditional circumcision rites – physically, psychologically and spiritually – to reduce casualties and to build ‘good’ men.
Support Our Cause
Your support makes a profound difference.
We are highly appreciative of the National Lottery and of corporate and individual sponsors who support our various projects. We invite you to become part of these life-changing projects through sponsorship / funding and in joining us in being champions of change.
Interested in helping us make a change?
Send an email to our founder and principal investigator:
Dr Lize Hellström / pi@bepart.co.za