The core of Chics’s role is to facilitate parents’ agency to improve the quality of life of their children through a process to deepen the understanding that community members (children, parents, day care centres, churches, schools, authorities, etc.) have of their context and to discover their ability to improve specific conditions. In this process, attention is given to the problems as well as the assets and opportunities pertaining to the different elements that make a good, green quality of life possible.
“Children in Southern Africa growing up in healthy households” is the vision that Chics has for children amidst all the challenges our country is facing.
The vision of a ‘healthy household’ is at the centre of Chics’s aspiration to promote opportunities for children to have a good quality of life, at home together with their parents, right where they are based.
Come to think of it, no matter how each person defines quality of life, it is what every individual big or small in the world hopes for, having clean air and water, being safe at home and in the community you live in, having enough food, peace etc.. In each community, Chics selects some elements of the fundamental human needs identified by Manfred Max Neef and some of the 17 SDGs to focus on.
Chics collaborates with local congregations and day care centres acting on the ground. It is crucial to develop a good method to measure the results of our projects, and to understand the impact of our contribution towards achieving the SDGs.
Chics is currently undergoing its third phase of development namely the pilot phase, and preparing to take our project to scale. It can be done in two ways: by way of a Franchise approach, where we assist a local entity to implement Chics, or by way of an additional approach, where an existing early childhood development programme incorporates Chics as part of their normal proramme.
We have also started to branch out and are developing a Green Chics programme, that focuses on the relationship of children with their environment; the developing of a health care Chcis is in a planning phase.
Chics offers a well-developed package to help various entities to improve the quality of life of vulnerable children: businesses and industries, churches, trusts, NGO’s and knowledge institutions.
You and Chics
Are you considering to locally own a Chics Social Franchise in your area?
Great! You will be joining hands with among others, Rev. Sipho Mokoena, the URCSA Ohrigstad (Kgautswane) minister and Chics Amogelang vision bearer, and Rosetta Mabusa (local Chics Officer).
Are you considering to make Chics a part of your normal proramme?
Also great! You will join others who are in the process of developing this approach with us.
Businesses and industries may participate in finding ways to improve children’s quality of life by supporting the mission of Chics; one way in which they can do so is through BEE for poverty alleviation.
YOU MADE A DIFFERENCE (REAL STORY OF SUCCESS)
One may say water is a constitutional right for all children and everyone. That is true. However, we still have children who are struggling to access water, let alone clean water. This was the situation for children at a certain day care centre in Kgautswane, deep in the mountains of Limpopo, until their parents, who were members of the Amogelang Chics parents’ empowerment group, decided that their children deserve a good quality of life at their centre of learning.
One particular month their focus fell on water. During one of their discussions they realised that their children’s quality of life was threatened with regards to access to clean water at the day-care. At that stage, the day-care was supplied with water by parents who collected it in buckets from the river – a river that was also shared with domestic animals. At the end of the discussion, the parents concluded that something had to be done. Through a courtesy facilitation of the Chics@Amogelang Chics officer (field worker), Mrs. Rosetta Mabusa, they built a network with their community water affairs representative to install a tap in the day care premises. The parents worked hard to prepare pipes to provide water and up to today there is still a tap with clean, running water. Big thumbs up for parents not waiting for and blaming the government!
This is “finding a way to improve quality of life of children”, a real success story: it was initiated, carried out and achieved by ordinary parents in collaboration with URCSA Ohrigstad and a community water affairs representative!
