On Friday, 6 June, MaAfrika Tikkun, in partnership with The City of Cape Town, launched the Mfuleni Community Park in Mfuleni.
The parks main aim is to provide a safe recreational and learning space for the community, contribute towards increased food and social security and improved health and to facilitate skills development and selfemployment opportunities.
The community park already employs 69 staff, with around 400 community members involved in MaAfrika Tikkuns programmes on a monthly basis. The food garden and food kitchen feeds an estimated 200 people per day, who are unemployed, disabled and sick, the majority being patients from the health programme.
There is improved employability through the computer literacy training centre for 65 community members per month, as well as improved health conditions via the health programme, with an estimated 138 registered patients who receive home-based care and HIV support. The food garden is a training site for members of the community that will indirectly benefit hundreds within the community.
Ronnie Simons, Community Projects Manager of MaAfrika Tikkun says, The communitys response has been quite overwhelming. We hope to see a real integration of the various projects that MaAfrika Tikkun and partners run, so as to address the communitys needs in a more holistic manner.
I believe that the focus should be on building strong families in order to build strong communities. The greatest issues currently facing the Mfuleni community are the high rate of unemployment and HIV/Aids.
Our challenge will be to conduct more focused work with the youth and primary caregivers, so that the social fabric and morality within the community can be strengthened and restored. More skills development and job creation projects need to be introduced so that some hope is restored.
