"Kanye Kanye"

Partners in Parenting

Sahee has a long-standing partnership with Moya Centre. This long-term collaboration is also due to the fact that the community-based NGO has evolved over time, emerging stronger from crises and recognizing and responding to the changing needs of its target groups. It is worth looking back at the cooperation history, starting with the most recently closed project Each parent has their role.
Working with children from the community of Lobamba Lomdzala has proven that most of the problems the children face stem from home from families/parents. Hence there has been persistent social ills presented from this community such as child neglect, child labour, substance abuse to mention a few. This calls for an intervention project that will engage parents to solve the many issues faced by children. The project builds on the premise that every child needs unconditional love, verbal and physical affection, emotional security and sensitivity to his or her needs and feelings hence the need for parents to be enlightened on parental skills and practices.

During this project phase, Moya Centre will be working with young parents (young mothers and fathers/or father figures) and community stakeholders and try to reach the following objectives per target group:

Young parents
- The project aims to empower young parents in the Lobamba Lomdzala constituency by enhancing their parenting skills through training and monthly workshops that will be led by expertise in the different fields of parenting. It will focus on father or father figure involvement and partner support in child-rearing. Through the meetings, fathers/father figures will learn about their roles and responsibilities in the lives of their children. The project will also capacitate the parents on Sexual offenses and Domestic violence Act (SODV), make resources like counselling, referrals for legal advice,care support for the parents who wish to take action or seek intervention on abuse cases.

- The project aims to enhance resilience and economic independence amongst young mothers through entrepreneurship and life skills training. It is vital that these young mothers are economically empowered through skills training and financial education in order to help them break away from abusive relationships. Furthermore, skills training and financial empowerment will have a positive effect on the children of these mothers as well since evidence suggests a positive correlation between financial independence and positive parenting.

- The project will also improve conflict resolution skills and communication between parents. Young parents will be capacitated about co-parenting and stress management so that they are better positioned to resolve issues in a more peaceful manner. This will help to reduce cases where children are exposed to acts of violence.

- The project aims to encourage behavior change in seeking physical and mental health services amongst males. The project will provide information on the misconceptions that exist in the community.

Community stakeholders
- The project aims to bring on board the community of Lobamba Lomdzala through engaging the community leaders, local clinics, police and other NGOs working within the community. Through engaging these stakeholders, there will be a fluid interaction where the identification of cases and participants, referrals and information sharing will be done with ease. This is in line with Moya Centre’s five-year Strategic Plan 2024-2029 whose Objective 2.1 is to facilitate opportunities for effective stakeholder engagement with community leadership and beneficiaries.