The Heartlands Baby Sanctuary provides temporary residential care and safety for 25 children at any given time; they are currently working to recover after the lockdown ended income streams.
Somerset West, South Africa (14 July 2020) – In the last 5 years, the Heartlands Baby Sanctuary has offered temporary care and safety to 280 babies. The sanctuary’s goal is to temporarily care for a child and then reunite it with family, whether existing or adoptive.
In an average month, the sanctuary can go through 4800 nappies and 1900 bottles of formula. Staff and volunteers work 24/7 to ensure the safety of the babies and children.
“We provide individual specialised care and support to children in desperate need of care and protection from birth to 6 years. Children are placed with a valid court order from the Children’s Court.
After the Children’s Court proceedings are finalised, they are either reunited with their parents or family members, placed in foster care, transferred to other long-term facilities or adopted. We strive to develop the family bond by either visiting or being accommodated in the mother’s room. We educate them on how to nurture and safely care for their children, once reunited
back at home.Heartlands Baby Sanctuary is a registered Child and Youth Care Centre and Community Mental Health Facility.”
Since the lockdown, the Heartlands Baby Sanctuary lost an income of R120,000.00 from their various sustainability projects.
“These were developed and implemented in order to generate income to work towards becoming more self-sustainable. Combined, these sustainability projects account for 24% of our annual budget (excluding the Department of Social Development at only 22%).
The projects consist of The Chic Boutique, Coffee Shop, Bookshop and a registered Training Centre, all situated on the same premises. During the first 8 weeks of the outbreak, all four projects were closed, resulting in a loss of over R120 000. To date, we have only been able to re-open the Chic Boutique, with the other projects still remaining closed until Level 1 is reached.”
With the uncertainty caused by level changes. They have established a new project. A food garden. The food garden will supplement their own kitchen costs but mostly it will be used to bring an income in from sales. As they discussed below, it will aid in their goal of being a self-sustained organisation.
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“In the interim though, our 5th sustainability project – SEEDS OF HOPE garden, is just a few months away from becoming commercially viable. We look forward to increasing the opportunity to become more self-sustainable in the long run.”
With their tiny residents unable to understand financial constraints, the organisation has asked the public to adopt a cot. This would help cover the costs of the massive shortfall they currently face. If you would like to adopt a cot, you can find the information below. You can also see the sanctuary’s wish list upon request.
If you would like more information, you can reach out via email, their website or Facebook.
Good Things Guy chose the Heartlands Baby Sanctuary as our charity of the month. Each month the team choose a charity that will get a banner on the website and a feature to help boost awareness. If you have a charity you would like to have considered, please check if it is on our list (here) and if not, reach out via email on that post to have it added.
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