Although not without its challenges, 2010 has been a good year for Thandanani Children's Foundation.

- Stabilised our financial situation and returned to a normal 5 day working week;

- Affirmed our focus on providing support to OVC households and terminated our support to Early Learning Centre's;

- Withdrawn from a number of households as they achieved stability and greater self-reliance;

- Reviewed our volunteer numbers and increased the stipend paid to volunteers;

- Restructured the organisation to strengthen both our management and service delivery capabilities;
- Introduced a range of new health services; and
- Achieved almost all of the service delivery targets we set for ourselves.

The stabilisation in our funding was a huge relief for the organisation. In securing adequate funding for the year we were able to return to normal working hours and normal service delivery levels. This “normalisation” is represented in the accompanying graph below which compares annual expenditure to child beneficiary numbers and spend on a year-on-year basis.

As should be evident in the graph above, the “shortfall” of funding to child beneficiaries experienced in the financial year ending March 2010 is starting to be reversed and we have seen a return to a more typical ratio of expenditure to child beneficiary in the current financial year.

In this regard, we hope to reach our target of supporting 800 households (approximately 2300 children and 800 caregivers) at any given point of time in the coming financial year. This capping in our beneficiary numbers will enable us to further improve our ratio of expenditure to child beneficiaries and provide greater control and predictability in the associated costs of service delivery to these beneficiaries from year to year.

This capping in our beneficiary numbers will also provide stability and predictability in the number of staff and volunteers required to deliver services to these beneficiaries. In 2011 Thandanani anticipates supporting approximately 100 volunteers who will volunteer for a minimum of 30 hours each month and will receive an increased monthly stipend.

Thandanani also introduced a number of changes to its management and staffing structures to increase capacity in critical areas and ensure greater efficacy in service delivery and “turn around times” in relation to our recently introduced system of staged household support and development.

At the management level we have promoted Nhlanhla Ndlovu, our previous Development  Coordinator, to the position of Programme Manager. This is aimed relieving the Director of the responsibility for the oversight of our various programmes and strengthening coordination across our various programme areas. With this promotion the organisation now has a management team that comprises the Director, the Finance & Administration Manager and the Programme Manager who now work together to ensure effective oversight of the organisation as a whole.

We have also strengthened our capacity at the programme level. In our Development Team we have promoted Bheki Madide, our previous Database & Sponsorship Administrator, to the position of Development Coordinator; promoted Agnes Mkhize, a previous Development Facilitator, to the new post of Senior Development Facilitator in Pietermaritzburg; and have appointed a new Database & Sponsorship Administrator and Development Facilitator to fill the vacancies resulting from these promotions. These changes have been introduced to strengthen the Development teams capacity to timeously and effectively deliver care and support services to households in accord with our new staged model of household support and development.

In our Welfare Team we have recruited a new Social Auxiliary Worker in Pietermaritzburg to relieve the Welfare Coordinator of some of the day-to-day demands of service delivery at the household level so that she has increased capacity to attend to monitoring and coordinating the various activities of the Welfare Team. The activities undertaken by the Welfare team have increased significantly over the last few years and now include Life-skill groups, Life-skill camps, Children's support groups and Caregiver support groups in addition to the core professional responsibilities of the Social Workers. Further, we have redeployed Fikile Zungu, our previous Trainer, to the newly created post of Group Work Facilitator to ensure adequate capacity within the Welfare Team in the roll out of the various Life-skill activities and Support Groups across all the communities in which we work.

In this regard, we have also devolved responsibility for volunteer training to each programme team. Staff within each team have now taken on the responsibility of volunteer training & supporting the volunteers within their particular team. This not only spreads the responsibility for training across a larger number of staff but also ensures that training is aligned and relevant to the actual needs and demands on the ground.

Finally, in March 2010, we introduced our new Health Services and so have a new team of Health Service staff and volunteers as part of the organisation. Although we are in the early stages in the roll out of these services, indications are that the services are being well received and are having a significant impact. In just six months our Health staff and volunteers have undertaken health assessments and education at 177 households. During this process they have engaged a total of 669 adults and children. 49% of these adults and 53% of the children consented to HIV testing with 14% of adults and 8% of children testing positive and receiving appropriate support and treatment.

These new health services now form an integral and important part of our structured system of household intervention that is designed to address the basic material, physical, cognitive and emotional needs of our beneficiaries and move them from a state of vulnerability to increased stability and self-reliance over time.

In this regard, credit needs to go to all Thandanani staff and volunteers for their continued commitment to improving the lives of the families we work with. As should be evident in the remainder of this report, their efforts do change the lives of those we work with and they have done Thandanani proud in 2010!