DPVO Newsletter – 8 August 2022

Thank you to all of you who have expressed an interest in DPVO and especially to those of you who have supported this initiative, both in-kind and through financial donations. In this newsletter, we bring you both good and not-so-good news – which highlights why, more than ever, we need your continued support.

DPV residents donate more than 67 items for Mandela Day

After days of cold and wet weather, the morning of Saturday 16 July was beautifully clear and sunny – just perfect for our Mandela Day donation drive!

Thank you to all the residents who popped into Streetscapes’ Rugley Road garden to drop off donations of clothing, toiletries and bed linen. Many visitors took the opportunity to buy fresh veggies, farm eggs and raw honey delivered straight from Streetscapes’ Kuils River farm. Thanks also to Zac and Chris from Kingdom Hall across the road who once again allowed us to plug into their electricity.

DPVO-Streetscapes-Mandela-Day

Streetscapes’ PEP gets a two-month funding reprieve

At the end of 2021, Khulisa Social Solutions was awarded a Public Employment Programme (PEP) contract with the City of Cape Town that led to the establishment of a coalition of NPOs working in the sector that created employment for 667 homeless individuals. You would have seen some of the people benefiting from this grant helping keep the streets of Devils Peak and Vredehoek tidy over the past months as part of the Streetscapes & DPV Outreach street cleaning initiative.

The first grant came to an end in June 2022 and the total number of PEP workers had to be reduced to 350. Streetscapes was able to keep 72 of the 118 rehabilitative jobs it had created. Treasury will inform Streetscapes by mid-August if the extra funding has been approved and whether the programme is safe for another two years.

Benefitting All: PEP workers collected 40 bags of rubbish across the neighbourhood in July

In just six months the project achieved promising results, with many participants moving off the streets or away from shelters / safe spaces to more permanent housing, as well as in terms of reduced substance abuse, higher motivation levels and recreation (see the stats and Streetscapes’ quarterly report here). We would love to see this programme continue. Read the full story here.

DPVO plans going forward

The PEP funding was offered to Streetscapes and their fellow NGOs just after DPVO was started, and diverted everyone’s attention to the new programme. We are now revisiting our original plans, to see how we can support Streetscapes’ work more effectively while serving the interests of all residents of Devil’s Peak and Vredehoek. Currently, we have two focus points:
  1. We are assisting Streetscapes to run a survey of people experiencing homelessness in and around our suburbs, which will be rolled out in the next few weeks.
  2. People often ask: How do people who join the Streetscapes programmes move on into the wider world of work? We have a few ideas!

How you can help

Our fundraising target is to cover our share of Chantel’s fieldworker salary through to December 2022. Chantel provides counselling to the cleaning team as a group and individually, and supports them as they move into accommodation. She is available to assist residents in our area who report individuals living rough in our area.

The donations we’ve received so far cover Chantel’s salary to September 2022. We also need to cover the incidental costs of outreach work and an enumeration of street-based people in our neighbourhood.