10 Families patients making great strides

Some volunteers with chili plants, one of the vegetables
planted in our 10 Families' gardens.

Over the last few months our 10 Families Programme has seen some great improvements, not only to the people involved in the programme but to the project itself. 

We have now started a certificate scheme, where each member of the programme has goals which they will work towards. Once they have reached these goals they receive a bronze certificate, then a silver, which will eventually progress to a gold certificate. 

At each landmark a patient will also receive a sustainable resource to help them after they are taken off EPap. Once they have reached the bronze goal they will be rewarded with a garden and some chili plants which are kindly donated by local St Lucia business ShakaBarker.

For silver they are rewarded with banana plants which, after producing bananas, will be a good sustainable food and perhaps income source for the members of the project. As achieving a gold certificate for our current patients may be quite a ways into the future we are going to assess our options to see if there is a plant we can provide that will generate plenty of food and perhaps income for our patients in the long-term.

The goals included in the certificate scheme include things such as gaining 10% of a patient's starting body weight. To be able to achieve a bronze level, a patient must have looked after their garden and plants provided for them, and their body mass index (BMI) must be of a healthy number over 18.5.   

Since the last update we have added new patients to the programme, all of whom are doing very well. Sibusiso Zungu who joined in June has already achieved his bronze certificate by gaining 13kg in just this short space of time. Last week we built his garden and his chilli plants are starting to appear. 

We have also added Nomusa, a previous home based care patient with a 6-month-old baby boy, who she is now able to care for herself as she has also gained 13kgs since June. When we first met her, she was unable to hold her son and now due to the energy and weight gain she is able to give him attention and care she didn't think was possible. 

Volunteer coordinator Carla with Nomusa,
looking happy and healthy.

We have also recently added a brother and sister to our 10 Families list, who are currently living with one of our support group members as their mother sadly passed away and their father works in another village. They have now been on the programme for three months and are starting to show improvements in their weight, which everyone is very pleased about.

As for our long-running patients, they are all improving rapidly and nearly everyone now has received a garden. Mcabangeleni Mthembu has in total put on over 20kgs since he started on EPap, and the Zikhale family is slowly improving week by week and the children are gaining more energy too.

Overall, the 10 families programme is evolving and adapting each week and we are excited to see how our patients improve each time we visit.