YOUNG HEROS FOUNDATION
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Mission Statement
We empower Swaziland’s most vulnerable youth so they may achieve their fullest potential through: Life-support grants Healthcare HIV education, prevention and care programs Educational support Gender and economic empowerment programs
About This Cause
YHF Programs: Life-Support Grants Our original program links orphan families with sponsors who provide monthly life-support grants of $29.95 for necessities such as food, medicine, school uniforms and warm blankets. We have supported over 2,000 orphans in this way. Healthcare Program All children in our program and their caretakers have access to medical care, including physical exams, vaccinations, medicine, testing for HIV, TB and STIs; and education on reproductive health and sexual abuse. The program includes comprehensive medical and psychosocial support for those who test HIV+, including monthly support groups and annual camps, run in conjunction with Newman's Own SeriousFun. In the past two years alone, we have provided medical access to over 9,000 children and caretakers. Skills Training Employment Program (STEP) Through partnership with five training centers throughout Swaziland, we offer those who age out of life-support grants a year-long course in their choice of 10 vocations, along with basic business management training, so they may become self-sufficient adults. Over 500 students have graduated and been certified in their fields. Of those, 57% are female. Umliba Loya In 2015, Young Heroes was chosen by Pact to undertake a three-year program funded by USAID and the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). This program reached over 9,000 women and children with programs that included Girls' Clubs in schools -- which offered lessons in sexual/reproductive health; HIV; life skills; and healthy decision-making -- and WORTH groups, which are community-based savings and micro-entrepreneur organizations for the female caretakers of orphans and vulnerable children. Litsemba In early 2018, Young Heroes was asked to assume the management of a network of 90 Neighborhood Care Points, which are community centers staffed by female volunteers where impoverished children receive a meal every day, along with basic pre-school education. We have begun a program of income-generating activities for the women at 15 of these NCPs so far, in recompense for their generosity. Awards & Recognition: • Young Heroes Foundation has received a Gold Seal of Transparency from Guidestar. • We have been presented to UNICEF's Global Orphan Alliance as a best practice that other countries should emulate. • Khulekani Magongo, our Executive Director in Swaziland, was awarded a Ford Fellowship to study non-profit management at Columbia University. • In 2015, Mr. Magongo won the Titans Building Nations Award in the category of civil society/charity organizations for the entire Southern African region. YHF Beneficiaries: There are two groups who benefit from Young Heroes' work: orphaned children and their caretakers, the majority of whom are adult women. The children in our core programs are ages 0-19 who have lost at least one parent to HIV/AIDS. They are predominately based in the rural areas, where subsistence farming is the occupation of over 70% of the population. While some live in child-headed households, the vast majority are in the care of female relatives, particularly grandmothers as HIV/AIDS has decimated the population of young adults. Our programs benefit these women by supplying funds to the homestead for the children's needs and by creating projects such as WORTH that enable them to better support themselves. Successes this past year: • 789 orphans were sponsored with life-support grants; 96% of them are in school. • 102 new students were enrolled in our STEP vocational program; 53% of new enrollees are young women. • We provided HIV/TB/STI testing and counseling to 5,100 children and adolescents, and managed 13 monthly Teen Clubs for 720 HIV+ girls and boys. • Our WORTH program for female caretakers enrolled 2,600 members over three years. Together, they saved over $150,000 with which to support each other. • Our Girls' Clubs in Hhohho secondary schools enrolled 3,900 adolescent girls who received education in HIV and sexual/reproductive health; life-skills; and healthy decision-making. How does YHF stand out: There is no other organization in Swaziland that works on a national level to comprehensively support the financial, health and psychosocial well-being of orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) and their female caretakers. Other organizations, many of whom we collaborate with, work on one aspect or in one locality, but none offer our range or depth of service. Being deeply entrenched in Swaziland's rural communities, Young Heroes works constantly with community chiefs and their councils. Our History: While serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in Swaziland in early 2005, Steve Kallaugher was asked by the country’s National Emergency Response Council on HIV/AIDS (NERCHA) to create a means for people both within Swaziland and overseas to help the country’s burgeoning population of AIDS orphans. The result is Young Heroes, which launched on February 3, 2006 as a program of NERCHA. Young Heroes Foundation, our 501(c)(3) American affiliate, launched at the same time. Our original program links sponsors who provide monthly life-support grants with orphan families in need. These stipends give them funds for food, clothing, school fees and other necessities, so they can stay together as a family on their homesteads, where they feel most safe and secure. In 2009, we launched our Healthcare Program, followed by the Skills Training Empowerment Program (STEP) in 2013. In 2014, Young Heroes became an independently registered NGO in Swaziland. In the autumn of 2015, Young Heroes received a three-year grant from USAID and the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) via PACT to undertake the Umliba Loya Embili and DREAMS projects, which concluded. In 2017, a grant from the government of the Kingdom of the Netherlands through the International HIV/AIDS Alliance and CANGO enabled Young Heroes to implement READY+ in Swaziland. Most recently, building on the success of our previous Umliba project, Young Heroes launched Insika Ya Kusasa in late 2018.