South Africa – a helping hand after apartheid

During apartheid, the black population faced constant social exclusion and dehumanisation. Even though apartheid officially ended with the first democratic elections in 1994 and Mandela’s appointment as president, the country is still striving to achieve a peaceful transition from an oppressive racist system to an anti-racist democracy. This transition was not always peaceful – children and young people often had to witness cruel acts of social and political violence and suffered from these traumatic experiences as a consequence.

CHILDREN FOR TOMORROW was particularly concerned with helping the young victims of this regime. For this reason, the foundation offered the children and families from the townships individual psychiatric treatment as well as group and family therapy aimed at violence prevention.

From 1999, CHILDREN FOR TOMORROW – SOUTH AFRICA began collaborating with the Centre for Therapy in the Department of Psychology at the University of Western Cape and from 2000 with the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Stellenbosch University. In addition to individual, group and family therapy sessions, psycho-educational workshops were also held at partner schools in Langa. The holiday programmes regularly offered the children a break in order to boost their psychosocial skills with a wide variety of activities. The staff also ran a psychotherapeutic group programme for HIV and AIDS survivors, while the art therapy programme was a resounding success, especially among children with limited verbal skills.