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Community Outreach Programme expands

With effect from Spring 2009, we have re-named our Orphan-care development project the Orphaned and vulnerable children project. After a review of the numbers of children we were helping, a decision was taken to expand the scope of this project and it now supports children that are deemed an orphan or vulnerable child based on the following definitions:

An Orphan is described as a child under 18 years of age who has lost their mother (maternal orphan) or both parents (double orphan) – (Unicef/UNAIDS,1999).

According to South African law, vulnerable children are defined as:

  • children who are neglected, destitute and abandoned;
  • children with terminally ill parents;
  • children born to single mothers;
  • children with unemployed caretakers;
  • children abused or ill-treated by caretakers; and
  • disabled children

Source: Smart 2003