According to Jesse Laitinen, manager of strategic partnerships at Khulisa, many of the participants had been stuck in a cycle of petty crimes such as theft and by-law offences like aggressive begging. "Constantly being arrested and appearing in the community court costs society financially and it also has a psychological impact on those who find themselves trapped in the cycle. These are the people who fall through the cracks in society.
"Unfortunately, because street people often have no address, a social worker has only one day to spend with them - and then they go back to the street. We started looking at other ways to help street people in a meaningful way," she continues.
Funded through the City of Cape Town and part of the Expanded Public Works Programme, Khulisa's project provided vagrants with personal development programmes and opportunities to earn an income in order to help reintegrate them into society.
The participants were paid R1,200 fortnightly, enabling them to either return to their families with something to offer or pay for themselves to stay in a shelter. Now coming to an end after five months, the intervention has seen 69% of the people involved no longer on the streets, of which 33% have reunited with their families.
One of the people helped by the pilot project is 53 year old John Morley who, up until now, had lived on the streets of Cape Town for 43 years - sleeping on the pavement outside the South African parliament.
Morley's downfall began when he was stabbed aboard one of the deep-sea fishing boats on which he worked, resulting in a disability and the loss of his job. He became a heavy drinker and had little contact with his family.
After decades of relying on handouts, begging and car guarding for his survival, Morley turned a new leaf during the Khulisa project whilst working as part of a street cleaning crew. Five months after being involved in the project, he has stopped drinking, moved back with his family and assumed a leadership position within the group, taking responsibility for the stock room where all the brooms, spades, clothes, bags etc. are stored. With the help of a set of rules and stock register that he developed, nothing has gone missing under his watch.
Having proven himself as a reliable, hard worker and with his passion for farming, Morley will 'graduate' from the pilot project to start farming commercially in a city garden. Two major food retail chains have already confirmed they will buy his products, thereby ensuring that there is a market.
Although the pilot project has come to an end, Khulisa is placing its participants in programmes that will help them further. 15 have begun job shadowing at CBD businesses like Doppio Zero, Wimpy's, ChopChop and OpHelp, while ten are on their way to become micro-entrepreneurs in farming, bakery, informal trading and recycling.
