Challenges

Land and By Laws

The centre does not have ownership of the land it utilizes. The land is privately owned and this restricts the centre from erecting a permanent building. This has affected many aspects of the centre’s running such as service delivery and funding. The centre has forfeited more than R 1,5 million from a donor due to the inability to secure land. They have consulted with the local councilors with regards to this situation but this has been in vain because the ward councilor had failed to attend to their problem.

Lack of water and sanitation are major problems facing the running of the centre. The organisation uses shacks for all its buildings including the day care centre. The municipality has refused to build a sewage system because the office does not comply with municipal by-laws. The by-laws require a proper building and not a shack before the municipality can build a sewer system. Consequently the advice office and the children use ventilated pit latrine. The centre feels strongly about the by-laws due to the unfairness of using the same by-laws on an undeveloped area such as Orange Farm as those used in affluent areas such as Sandton and Midrand. They feel so strongly about this issues that they plan to challenge these laws.

Lack of Resources

Lack of sustained funding threatens the smooth operation of the advice centre and is a threat to the centre’s success. Part-time employees as well as volunteers lack motivation to stay in the advice centre because the income is not stable and the centre struggles to offer permanent employment. Although there are alternative sources of funds such as the recycling project, theses are not sufficient for the proper running of an advice centre. The advice centre needs funding to implement its capacity building strategies.

Proper building

As mentioned above, the centre’s buildings are all shacks. The centre is reluctant to build proper buildings because of land ownership issues. The Department of Social Development does not recognize the day care centre so the children lose out on social grants which most of them are in dire need of. In extreme weather conditions, the shacks become problematic because they are not efficient in withstanding such temperature conditions.

As it has been clearly shown, the challenges faced by the advice centre feed into one another. Solving at least one could make a huge difference.