Loeriesfontein youth join fight against HIV and AIDS

A child and youth centre supported by one of our wind farms in the Northern Cape is running a new programme to raise awareness about South Africa’s most prevalent health threat.

More than 7.7million of the nation’s population are HIV-positive today, and UN figures show that one in five people aged between 15 and 49 are currently living with the virus.

Education and health programmes have halved the number of deaths from AIDS-related illnesses since 2010, but with the syndrome claiming a staggering 71,000 South African lives last year, World Aids Day on December 1 marked the launch of a new initiative in Loeriesfontein.

The community’s Isibindi Safe Park announced that it would be answering this year’s World Aids Day call of “Communities Make a Difference” by preparing the next generation of South African adults to guard against, or at least manage, HIV and AIDS.

Isibindi Project Manager Marita Ryk-Kammies explained: “The Loeriesfontein Isibindi Safe Park will keep its doors open during the December and January school holiday period and include an AIDS programme which will talk about education and prevention, as well as a 16-days-of-activism programme which will talk about domestic violence and other related problems.”

Loeriesfontein Wind Farm funds the social interventions conducted through the Isibindi Safe Park project, allowing professional child and youth care workers to offer continuous support to disadvantaged children and families.

The Safe Park, intended as a place where youngsters can escape from their daily hardships in supervised play, will soon be getting those who would otherwise be left unattended at home into the festive mood.

Marita added: “Children are not safe out on the streets, so Isibindi gives them a safe place to come to and be looked after, plus they can also learn valuable life lessons from the programmes which we hope will help them make better choices when they are faced with real life situations.”

• Loeriesfontein Wind Farm and its sister project, Khobab Wind Farm, began commercial operations in December 2017 as part of our African joint venture platform, Lekela Power. With a generation capacity of 140 MW each, they collectively power around 240,000 South African households.