In October 2023, we visited our partners, Choice Trust in Tzaneen, Limpopo. We joined them on some of their door-to-door campaigns in Maroreng and Mandlakazi villages.
We stopped and chatted with teen mothers at Mugodeni Grace Health Centre during the visit. It was interesting to see how people’s perceptions of COVID-19 vaccines have evolved for the better in some cases and in others, unfortunately remained negative. Some people we spoke to were still very sceptical of the vaccine.
Our team also asked Traditional Healers about how they responded to the pandemic. They told us they referred their patients to local clinics and encouraged them to get vaccinated.
Have a look at some of the pictures from our trip in the gallery at the bottom of the page.
Choice Trust Field Visit Gallery
African Alliance Partner Awards
The African Alliance’s Perrykent Nkole presented the Choice Trust team with the 2023 African Alliance Award.
One of the highlights of the trip was the opportunity to present the 2023 African Alliance Award to Choice Trust and North Star Alliance (which is based in Mpumalanga). This accolade is awarded to community-led organisations who are championing meaningful and inclusive community engagement. The two organisations played a crucial role in the pilot phase of our Ports2Arms intervention, which uses community monitors to collect information about the things that are harming or helping vaccine roll-outs. Both Choice Trust and North Star Alliance demonstrated their commitment towards ensuring community leadership during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Covid-19 Pandemic Heroes
At the African Alliance, we were thrilled to recognise the work of community influencers who played a key role in mitigating the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in South Africa. These individuals showed selfless leadership in their communities by volunteering to raise awareness and distributing essential commodities such as ARVs, hand sanitisers, and food packages.
Adolph Mathebula
The pandemic was scary at first. My colleagues and I wanted to see how people from the community felt about COVID-19 and the subsequent vaccination roll-out. My role was to interview traditional leaders or indunas, professional nurses from the clinics and ward councilors so that they can give us their stories and their experiences within the communities that they come from.
I remember when I interviewed one induna, he told me they were burying more than ten people a week, which is quite difficult for anyone to swallow. When COVID started to kill people like that, I felt big emotions. I also tested positive and I thought I was going to lose my life.
Jamela Tiva
My job was to speak to farm workers in the area about their feelings about COVID-19. Most farm workers were reluctant to go and get the vaccine when it arrived because they had heard the myths surrounding the vaccine.
They were worried about a chip being inserted in their arms that would eventually kill them.
But fortunately I got vaccinated before I went to speak to them so I could use myself as an example. I could show them that I have had both my vaccinations and none of the myths they were speaking about happened to me. This helped me to convince them to get vaccinated themselves.
Angelina Mokgolobotho
My interviewed the community health workers about the experiences they had during COVID-19, what worked and what didn’t work for them and whether there were enough vaccines available when they needed them. I also asked them whether they received any information about the vaccine they had to administer to people. Information about the side-effects and why it is important to get vaccinated. We also provided information to clinic patients to help them to decide whether they wanted to get vaccinated or not.
I think this work is important because the community health workers were the ones doing the work and by asking them about the challenges they faced, we could help them to find solutions.
Mantsha Ngobeni
During COVID I did home visits to our beneficiaries. We weren’t allowed to get close to them [because of the COVID restrictions] but we provided them with some resources, like masks and hand sanitizers to make sure that they were protected from COVID.
Having to interact with these beneficiaries, and to hear what challenges they encountered and the misconceptions that they had, because with COVID, everyone had misconceptions, was very challenging. Hearing that some family members could not attend the funerals of their loved ones because of COVID was difficult and these stories stuck with me.
Farai Hove
I think that giving people a chance to reflect on how they experienced the whole pandemic is very significant. It gave us a chance to understand the impact that the pandemic had on them as households as well as individuals.
Through the interaction with the communities, I have realised that there is a lot of post-COVID trauma that is still out there. It hasn’t been addressed and I don’t think it will ever be addressed, but through us as CHOICE, engaging with these communities around their experiences, I think it also worked as a counselling session because the platform that we created was a safe space.
Lutendo Phophi
During the pandemic I interviewed adolescent girls and young women and teachers about their feelings and experiences with COVID.
Young people were scared to talk about the COVID vaccine because of all the misconceptions and myths around it. Some of them believed that their own loved ones had died from the vaccine because they passed away shortly after being vaccinated. So this is where we created awareness and provided them with information about the vaccine.
Melita Machethe
During the COVID-19 pandemic I interviewed HIV-positive children and their care-givers. When I interviewed the participants it brought up a lot of emotions for me. Many of them spoke about the loved ones they have lost during the pandemic. Some of them spoke about their fears of dying of COVID-19. But people’s biggest fear was about the vaccine. They felt forced to take it and feared what it would do to them.
I counselled them and I tried to give them as much information about the virus and the vaccine as I could so they would feel comfortable talking to me about their feelings and getting vaccinated.
Judy Makwela
Ports2Arms is so important in our province because there are so many people who don’t have valid information. It shocked me to see how many misconceptions people had about the vaccine. But what Ports2Arms did is it came in with all the information, shared it with us as a local NGO and then we could share it within our communities and help prepare people for the vaccine.