Chairman’s Report

30 years of caring for the homeless

The Haven Night Shelter was founded 30 years ago. Back then, who could have imagined that from one shelter for the homeless in the centre of town would grow the Haven Organisation. Today, we have 13 shelters in the Western Cape.

Our services

The Haven’s vision is that ‘no one should live on the street’. We assist all adult homeless people whether they live in the shelters or on the streets. We offer:

Shelter and food. The Haven has 973 beds distributed between our 13 shelters. Last year we offered a bed and food to 2 539 people. We also provided food to people on the streets from our shelters and assisted nearby soup kitchens.

Counselling. At every shelter, we offer counselling and assess the needs of each individual client.

Assistance. This depends on the needs of our clients and may involve reuniting them with their families, finding them employment, caring for their health problems, or sorting out IDs and pensions.

Staff training and development

An important focus for the Haven this year has been staff training, with the aim of achieving consistent service levels and improving service delivery.

My congratulations to all the Haven staff members who received their certificates.

This year, in response to the shortage of social workers, the Haven decided to fund two social work student bursaries commencing in 2009.

Two crucial events

During winter this year two crucial events took place that stretched Haven resources to the limit. First, the tragic xenophobic attacks that resulted in people being thrown out of their homes and their possessions looted, and, secondly, June was particularly wet and chilly. As a result, there were 450 additional people sleeping at our shelters.

Future plans

We plan to expand and upgrade four of our existing shelters over the next couple of years.

Thank you

Each shelter has its own management committee who is responsible for the shelter’s operations. Thank you to all the volunteer shelter committee members for contributing so much of your free time to this worthwhile organisation. And to the office bearers, Brenda, Raoul, Graham, Philip and Terence, thank you for the incredible work you do behind the scenes. Without you we could not have achieved the results we have.

A big thank you to all our staff who do unbelievable work under often difficult circumstances. And a special thank you to Hassan, our CEO and the staff at Head Office — Michael, Leoni and Michelle.

Lastly, thank you to the all the people of the Western Cape for your generosity. And to the City of Cape Town and the Provincial Government of the Western Cape. Without your support, we could not run the shelters.

It is fitting to end with this quote from ’The Second World by Parq Khanna:

“The civility of people’s behaviour tends to reflect on the decency of their governments”.