DPVO Newsletter – 26 April 2022
Welcome to the third edition of the DPV Outreach newsletter. We received our official NPO status (271-223 NPO) and have been busy getting things up and running. Read about our inaugural meeting, our fundraising and donations successes, an update from Streetscapes, and ways you can get involved.
Outreach success stories
Between December 2021 and April 2022, 9 out of 13 workers in the DPVO/ Streetscapes street cleaning team operating in the DPV neighbourhood have moved off the streets – a 69% success rate for the City of Cape Town’s Public Employment (PEP) programme!
Emily, a member of the cleaning team, recently moved into housing with assistance through the programme.
“I’d been living on the streets for 24 years before Streetscapes helped me get myself a place. I am now 4 months into my contract with them and they have helped me a lot – they have allowed me the opportunity to work and put my life back on track.” ~ Emily Fredericks
Thank you to those DPV residents who donated items for Emily’s new home! Streetscapes is always looking for donations of homeware and furniture for these transitions. Small items can be dropped off at the Rugley Road Garden. For larger items, please contact DPV Outreach or Streetscapes.
WATCH: Chantal Sampson used to be homeless. Now she helps other people get off the streets. (GroundUp / News24)
Thanks for joining us at our inaugural meeting!
On 23 March 2022, DPV Outreach held its inaugural meeting at the Service Dining Rooms, Canterbury Street. The event was featured in the media, including a report by James Stent of Ground Up: Cape Town suburb tries new approach to homelessness.
Here are our top takeaways from the meeting:
- Homelessness is a symptom of social and economic issues, rather than ‘the problem.’
- More than R744 million/year is spent on addressing homelessness in Cape Town.
- There is no single solution to homelessness: a multi-pronged approach is needed.
- Social investment in people gives results, but it’s not ‘quick and easy’.
- Leading by example: Chantel and the Outreach/Streetscapes team show us what can be done.
Learn more about these takeaways
Thank you to the Streetscapes team, the Service Dining Rooms for the venue, our guest speaker Jon Hopkins of U-Turn, our Master of Ceremonies Grant Stewart, and, of course, everyone who attended the meeting.
Fundraising update
Your donations give our fundraising a boost, thank you!
We have passed the 50% mark of our fundraising goal, and thanks to our incredible community’s heart-warming response, the cost of Chantel’s Auxiliary Social Work course is now covered! We appreciate the growing support for the approach we are taking. The rest of the funds raised will go towards our share of Chantel’s salary through our partnership with Streetscapes.
The original intention was that Chantel would study this year. However, with the expansion of her responsibilities as peer counsellor to the new cleaning team at Streetscapes, it has been agreed that it will be more sensible for her to enrol for the first 2023 course. This will allow her the time to settle the cleaning team workers and also give Streetscapes time to arrange cover for when she is studying.
Tuff love
Many thanks to the team at Tuffy Bags for their recent generous donation of refuse bags. The team has filled hundreds of bags since they started work in our area, so the support from Tuffy is much appreciated.
Besides working on our streets and in our parks, the team also supports the staff of the Streetscapes Roeland Street and Rugley Road gardens when they need extra hands, as well as helping colleagues in the Company Gardens.
Did you know?
In a baseline questionnaire for the City of Cape Town Public Employment Programme (PEP), which is being implemented by Streetscapes and 13 other NGOs that support people experiencing homelessness, participants were asked to select the reasons they left home.
The top four reasons why participants left home were:
Streetscapes update
“The City of Cape Town Public Employment Programme (PEP) has made significant progress in most of the set 15 target areas. The graph below shows the indicators measured in December 2021 (blue line) and again early April (orange line). A good M&E system helps identify promising interventions early so that they can potentially be implemented elsewhere.” ~ Khulisa Social Solutions
What has the PEP Cleaning Team accomplished in DPV so far?
The cleaning team has made quite a difference to our streets and parks in just a few months. You will find photos of the team’s handiwork on our website. And if you have any ideas about what else you would like them to tackle, please drop us an email!
MORE BIN BAGS NEEDED
The team has run out of bin bags! If you are able to donate bags, please drop them off at the Streetscapes Garden. You can also contact DPV Outreach if you’d like to sponsor bags for the long-term.
Care pack appeal
Would you consider sponsoring a basic hygiene care pack for a street cleaning team member at R90 per pack?
Neighbourhood news
Want to contribute your food scraps to the compost heap at the Streetscapes Rugley Road Garden? Here’s what you can toss into your compost bin.
How you can help us
We are still fundraising to cover our share of Chantel’s salary.
The donations we’ve received so far cover Chantel’s salary to September 2022. Our target is to be sure we have her salary covered up to the end of the year. Thereafter, we plan to cover Streetscapes’ management fee for the Outreach Team in our neighbourhood, as well as the incidental costs of outreach work and an enumeration of street-based people in our neighbourhood.
Evidence shows that this approach to addressing homelessness is the most cost-effective option for our neighbourhood (Hopkins et al, 2020).