Creating Opportunities Of Kindness
Our Communities
Brecknock
Alex
Brecknock
| Description | Squatter camp. Illegal settlement that has been rapidly growing in the last few years. A small church based in Fourways (run by Pastor Trevor) supports this community by providing just over a 100 basic grocery packs monthly (not sufficient to feed a family for a week). Church refers to this community as “Adam’s Village” | |
| Location | Intersection of Witkoppen and Main | |
| Demographics | 300-350 residents Majority male- contract workers Approx 150 women and children, women are mainly unemployed, those that do work, work as domestics or as security guards People live in “sections” corresponding to nationality with the foreigners keeping their distance from the SA citizens Children attend Witkoppen Primary, Sefikeng Primary, Schools in Cosmo City (high school) |
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| Community needs | Sanitary pads Clothing Blankets Groceries Hygiene items and toiletries Baby food and nappies | School uniforms School supplies (stationery) Books (children and adults) Assistance with grants, IDs, getting children access to schools Social worker support |
| COOK concerns | Children not in school Child abuse (potentially) Hygiene conditions at the squatter camp (abundance of rats) Lack of support from social workers and ward councillor Drug and alcohol abuse |
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Alex
| Description | Waster pickers/ recyclers. Some of whom had built informal shelters next to the abandoned building. Numerous times these shelters are destroyed/ burned. We came to know this community through and NPO called Vuka Skoko who run a feeding scheme in Alex. They could no longer provide meals to this community and had stopped providing meals for well over a year when we started serving this community in Jul 2021. | |
| Location | Adjacent To Maningi Scrap Metals in Alex next to an abandoned building |
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| Demographics | 30-50 wastepickers, mainly male (2/3 female wastepickers sometimes show up) Children that live in the nearby building and in the shacks around the area often come to collect food (10-15 children, mainly primary school children, with a few teenagers) Street hawkers- older women (3/4) are also part of this community. |
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| Community needs | Clothing Blankets Groceries Sanitary pads Drug rehab support | School uniforms School supplies (stationery) Books (children) Assistance with grants, IDs, getting children access to schools Social worker support |
| COOK concerns | High prevalence of drug addicts in this community, almost all the waste pickers that we meet and serve are addicts Many are homeless Safety during distributions- distributing anything other than food causes many people to come in from the street and from the nearby settlement. Incidents have occurred where unknown people have come and stolen items from one of the children (during a school shoe distribution) |
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