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Hilton Valley Health and Development Organisation - SA

The Swiss Kayak Expedition will be in aid of this sustainable charity, specifically focussing on their work they do with orphans and elderly carers, AIDS patients, and general poverty alleviation.  Charli Denison has worked with this organisation in the past, helping to provide vegetable gardens and Easter fun-days for the children - through the help of Umngeni Aids Centre, which manages 600 AIDS patients and assists a further 2500 HIV positive individuals.  They coordinate psychological counselling and support, blood CD count testing, training of mentors, poverty relief, and dietary guidance..

The organisation runs bereavement groups twice a week to help families of AIDS victims cope with their loss (or losses often), and also to help them to make memory boxes to remember their loved one/s by – which helps to build resilience among the kids.

They also have meetings with the elderly grandparents who have ended up caring for their grandchildren… to support each other but also to help them with tips to make their job easier at their age!

They have recently not managed to hold these sessions anymore, because the Department of Social Development and Welfare (who gives funds towards this) keeps delaying on funding promises – on a monthly basis and they are so inefficient that the organisations cannot proceed with their work because of the delays…

Currently they art simply trying to provide the orphans and their grandparetns with a healthy meal, but the bereavement groups are an important part in the lives of the people.