Khulisa Social Solutions is celebrating 25 years of helping others; from uplifting communities to supporting organisations in need, they have changed thousands of lives.
Sandton, South Africa (17 October 2022) – PJ Powers, also known as Thandeka, will be helping Khulisa Social Solutions, celebrate 25 years of changing lives on the 26th of this month. The powerhouse singer and performer will put on a show while talented actress, motivational speaker, coach, and human rights activist, Regina Mary Ndlovu will take the helm as the event’s master of ceremonies.
Khulisa is a multi-award-winning non-profit organisation registered in 1997, that has focused on reinventing lives in marginalised communities throughout South Africa.
“Khulisa will use this monumental celebration to look back on the two and a half decades of working tirelessly to address social vulnerabilities and inequalities in communities by collaborating with other distinguished organisations in our network to demonstrate measurable social impact.” – Lesley Ann van Selm, Managing Director of Khulisa Social Solutions
Two decades ago, Khulisa started in South African prisons to support the rehabilitation of young offenders to become productive members of society, the organisation then moved on to communities to address issues inhibiting sustainable development. Today, Khulisa actively partners with individuals and organisations that intend to make a difference in society, helping them to create virtuous circles of mutual support and development based on society’s interdependence and innate desire to give back.
The Alex Peace-Making Programme
The Alex Peace-Making Programme is a great highlight of Khulisa’s work. In response to the myriad of challenges facing the community including poverty and violence, Khulisa created the Alex Peace-Making Programme which aimed to create peace-making dialogues between various members of the community in Alexandra.
Through its close ties in the community, Khulisa facilitated peace-mediation processes targeted at victims of abuse and violence, business owners, youth, families who had lost loved ones, members of LGBTQI+ groups, persons with disabilities, foreign nationals, and NGOs.
This peace-mediation process, aimed at understanding the factors behind the violence and other negative factors in the communities, has seen a diversity of groups of people come together to advocate for social cohesion in the community of Alex.
Khulisa’s Streetscapes Project
Another notable project by Khulisa is the Streetscapes Project, which has been in operation for over six years in the city of Cape Town. The Streetscapes Project offers long-term community-based rehabilitation that uniquely combines housing, work-based rehabilitation, and the necessary psychosocial support. The development of decent jobs is an integral part of our efforts to provide sustainable solutions to combat long-term homelessness, coupled with severe mental health and addiction issues.
In the past 12 months, Streetscapes had 120 full-time service clients, with a success rate of 69% of moving and retaining people off the streets. 64% actively participated in various substance rehabilitation programmes, and 19% exited the programme into sustained livelihoods elsewhere. A pathway off the streets into a job or back home can take up to 24 months or even longer in some cases. As testimony of how motivated street-based people are to change their lives around is the very low dropout rate of only 14%.
“While the world continues to endure abject poverty because of insurmountable economic challenges leading to other social ills in our immediate communities, I believe as an organisation we have a lot to be proud of. There is still a lot of work ahead of us and we look forward to another twenty years of reinventing South Africa for the better,” concludes van Selm.
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