Sakhisizwe -Building the Nation - Bou Die Nasie

Most of us don't know a lot about LUPUS, while we are all aware about diseases such as HIV/AIDS, TB, Diabetes.....we don't realize that there is another killer around us. Julie Martin and Lorraine Mantini, both of them Community Liaison officers at The Arthritis Foundation came to give us more clarity regarding Lupus. It is good to know that The Arthritis Foundation leads the fight for the arthritis community, they help conquer everyday battles through life-changing information and resources, access to optimal care, advancements in science and community connections. LUPUS is a chronic, autoimmune disease, in other words, Lupus is a chronic inflammatory disease that occurs when your body's immune system attacks your own tissues and organs. People who have it will have an overactive and misdirected immune system. Lupus is systemic which means that it affects a wide part of the body, including the joints, kidneys, skin, blood, brain and the other organs. We have...

The Hospice Palliative Care Association of South Africa (HPCA) is an Association  founded in 1987 to support the work of organisations which provide hospice care to people across South Africa each year. They have 7 regional association members from each province and they promote quality in life, dignity in death. We spoke to Eric Watlington about HPCA and the Hospice Palliative Care Week that will toke place from the 5 to 12 of May. "Access to Palliative Care is a right and should be available to everyone irrespective of age, gender or race.  5-12 May marks Hospice Week which is an annual week of activities to raise the profile of hospice and palliative care in South Africa. The theme for this year will once again be   “Because I Matter” . This week serves to create awareness and celebration for the role of partnership in providing support and care for people with life-threatening illnesses. Hospice week also highlights the importance of an effective partnership b...

Our youths, future of tomorrow face many difficulties such as lack of employment opportunities, failure to succeed in education system, pressures of materialism, lack of affordable housing and many others....In front of all of those issues, it is imperative to find some solution tracks. We spoke to Siphelele Chirwa about Educo Africa. Educo Africa is a youth development organisation that help youth at risk through personal development. They serve young South Africans to discover and to live in the full of their potentials regarding employment. For Siphelele, as finding a job can be a job itself, Educo Africa want to educate the youngsters in owning a business, having his/her own job to create a better life not only for themselves by for the rest of community around them. Educo Africa offers a programme with two phases: the first one, uses wilderness experiential learning as a profound platform for young people to experience their inherent potential and the second one, it's...

Food Forward SA was established in 2009 to address widespread hunger in South Africa. They connect a world of excess to a world of need by recovering quality edible surplus food from the consumer good supply chain and distributing it to communities. We spoke on the phone with Andy Du Plessis who is The Managing Director at Food Forward SA. Having food or enough of it is truly a national crisis. The South African National Health and Nutrition Examination found that in urban areas, 28% of households were at risk of hunger while 26% were already experiencing hunger, in rural areas, 32 to 36% of people don't eat. People are hungry or at risk, skipping meals or going for days without food... It is estimated that 14 millions of South Africans don't have food. Meanwhile, good, non-expired, edible 10 million tonnes of food go to waste each year. Food Forward SA takes good and edible foods from retailers, manufacturers, wholesalers, farmers ect to redistribute them to registered ...

The Foundation for Life started in 2017 with the aim to focus on the child, the family and their external environment to promote the mental emotional and physical well-being of the family unit. They support the healing and the growth of the family through a therapeutic team. We spoke on the phone with Bettina Marias about the great work they do for the communities. Children, men, women, parents, families, people in general go through a lot in terms of emotionally, physically, psychologically abuses. Many of us have been mistreated with cruelty or violence, we are just down, we are lost, we don't have a place to go, we don't know where to go to seek treatment and our children are the most devastated young people. Foundation for Life gives a place, a platform where abused people can come to get the help needed in under the same roof, a place where you meet professional therapists who will completely listen to you without any forms of judgments. Not only do they work with ...

Many children in our country are left without parental supervision: divorced parents, single mothers or fathers, parents in jails, street children. They are left alone just to become victims of an unfair society. Through the phone, we spoke to Jessica Johannisen who is a social worker at DurbanVille Chidren's home about their organisation and what they do for our children. The DurbanVille children's home started in 1883 to look after children in need of care from all communities. As the country suffers from AIDS, 3.7 million of children are left orphans and they have no where to go. The DurbanVille Children's Home has 144 children between the ages of 2-18 years, but those children have been through a lot already in their young lives. They have difficult touching sad stories. If you want to get involved in such a noble cause, you can financially help the organisation or you go to volunteer, to help the children with their home-work. For more information ...

National Asthma Education Programme (NEAP) is a non-profit organisation that aims to disseminate impartial information about asthma diagnosis and treatment to health professionals and South African. We had a telephonic interview with Dr. Annamalai Medeshni regarding World Asthma Week and the impact of NEAP in the health industry. Asthma is a chronic disease of the airways that makes breathing difficult. When you have it, there is an inflammation of the air passages that results in a temporary narrowing of the airways that carry oxygen to the lungs. Coughing, wheezing, shortness of breath and chest tightness could be the  different symptoms. According  to Global Initiative for Asthma Report, 300 million of people worldwide are infected with Asthma and 346 000 deaths per year are caused by it and in South Africa only, 6 to 10% of adult have Asthma, 300 people will die from Asthma every year. It is imperative to raise awareness around it: as a chronic ...

Clean C is a group of enthusiastic people passionate about South Africa and the people in South Africa with the vision of g enerating opportunities through entrepreneurship, creating sustainable employment to enrich, educate, empower and inspire and uplifting communities to be free from crime, enabling them to live with mutual respect and dignity and to realize their dreams.  Th ey have been doing beach and community cleanups for the last 3 years: they have removed 8 tons of rubbish off the beaches. We spoke to Gregory about Clean C and its impacts in the different communities of Cape Town. Our beaches have a massive problem: littering. Not only on the beaches but in the communities, people don't seem to care about hygiene, they just litter everywhere while we have bins all around. Clean C was born out of the need to keep the beaches and the communities around being clean. While littering is done every day, all year long, it's during winter-time that we see the d...

In a so-called modern society,people of the LGBTIQ+ community face a lot of unjustified harms such as violence: lesbians, gays, transgenders... especially the Black ones are victims of different physical abuses from beatings to lapidation to burning in some countries. Employment discrimination, lack of good health... to mention only those are the problems that the LGBTIQ+ community still face. In the studio, we received Eric Butter, Nutt Chayodham and Josh Rimes from The Mr. Gay World The Mr. Gay World is a world competition that inspires and empowers gay men to come together in a public performance to showcase to the whole world that being gay does not take the human nature within you. Cape Town will once again host on hi soil the 4th time in the organisation's 11 year history. This annual international search for a gay role model takes place from 28 April to 5 May at various venues across the city. The Mr. Gay World will serve as platform to address issues of homophobia...