An Ark, as defined by Noah, is a community who are mobilised around the simple idea that they will not allow a child to suffer because of orphanhood amongst them. They have a committee and volunteers who have been trained to try and achieve this goal.

HOW THE ARKS WORK

Day Care

Orphans will drop off younger siblings at a day care centre on their way to school (if none is available, the resource centre can act as a day care centre).

After school, they will be attracted to return to the resource centre to spend their afternoon because the centre will supply:

A good midday meal
Library / computers / connectivity
Sport & Recreation
Facilities to do schoolwork / study
Day-care centre for younger siblings - so that the older children do not have to baby sit children all afternoon.

While orphans are at the centre:

Staff / Volunteers will pick up and counsel those who need it
Staff / Volunteers and other NGO's can access children to mentor them for the future
Staff / Volunteers will help children access the maximum aid available from the state
Staff / Volunteers will supervise schoolwork and look after younger siblings so that children can concentrate on their work
Older orphan's will be required to learn "survival gardening" and will help grow vegetables for the centre's kitchen. These children will also be expected to help with the chores of running the centre and the day-care centre.

ACCOMMODATION

After spending the afternoon at the centre, children go back to the home they used to share with their parents. There they are under the foster care of a relative or older sibling (if available). They have the backup and supervision of a "barefoot social worker" - who lives nearby and who will visit the children regularly to make sure that they are happy and well and that they are receiving appropriate care. These people (usually middle aged women) are volunteers who have been trained in communicating with children, in identifying problems and in counselling children up to a point. If there are problems she or (more rarely he) cannot handle, the volunteer refers the child back to the centre where more skilled help is available.

If children have no suitable adult living with them, there are several options - they may be placed with a related guardian, placed in unrelated foster care or in a cluster foster scheme or even in some cases left as child-headed households. This last is not an ideal situation, but if the oldest sibling is fairly mature and they stand to lose family assets if moved, it may be the best option.

The decision of where to place orphaned children is not easy and the specific options need to be assessed in each case. We believe that the best people to make this decision are a community committee with a barefoot social worker, the family and the children. Outsider decisions are going to be wrong very often because of lack of understanding of the community dynamics and of the personalities involved. Professional assessments are simply not going to be possible, both because of cost and lack of adequate numbers of trained professionals.

FOOD

Teenage orphans are trained to grow vegetables in the "survival gardening" or permaculture style - to help feed their younger siblings and themselves. The belief is that all assistance from outside the community cannot be relied upon. At the peak of the "Orphan epidemic" there will be three million orphans in South Africa alone. Relief agencies will be stretched beyond breaking point. South African Industry will itself be tested by the deaths of experienced staff and so may have no spare resources. If this time should co-inside with a global economic downturn or a major war, there will also be little help from outside our borders also. We want our teenage orphans to be able to prevent their own families from starving in that situation. We believe that this self - sufficiency will be an enormously empowering experience - even if it turns out to be unnecessary.

The vegetables grown at the centre will be used to make the lunch for the children. The way of spreading this practice will be a "garden of the week" Depending on the season; appropriate plants will be planted each week. The orphans will then be given seedlings (or seeds) of those plants and will make exact copies of the garden at home.

CLOTHING, SCHOOL BOOKS & SCHOOL FEES

Orphans will always have to rely on government foster care grants or donations for these items. We plan to enlist existing sewing circles to help sew clothing for school uniforms and warm clothes.

LIAISON WITH GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENTS

Noah is collaborating with several government departments:

Home Affairs are training some of our volunteers to collect information necessary to process birth certificates
Housing will donate a grant for each orphan requiring housing which Noah will use with Habitat for Humanity to build housing
Social development have donated running expenses for some of our resource centres
Agriculture have agree to give us starter packs for our resource centre gardens

RESPONSIBILITY & PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT

Orphans, while at the resource centre, will be expected to help with the chores and the gardening in return for use of the facilities. This will require some level of discipline and organisation. The experience of Boys' Town and other children's facilities proves that the most empowering way to do this is by self-governance within the parameters of a "constitution" - The Children's Charter (see 'History & Overview'). In addition, the shortage of trained personnel and the cost of employing them make adult control of these issues impossible.

In some communities, this much empowerment of children is culturally unacceptable, and we (Noah) cannot enforce it. We can only offer suggestions of strategies that have helped elsewhere. Ultimately, the community have to decide how they want to care for their children.

STAGES OF BUILDING AN ARK

Field Guide

When a group of people from a community come to us to start an ARK, we give them module one, when they have achieved the goals set out in that, they get module two and so on. Each module explains the pre-requisites of the module and the aims of the module and supplies a pack of material (such as a NOAH promotional video to help sell community leaders on the project), which will help achieve these aims. Our staff will be available to facilitate where they run into problems.

Module 1 - Mini demographic survey / assessment of strengths in community
Module 2 - "Selling the concept" to leadership of each strength group (or constituency) in community (e.g. Church, school governing body, traditional leader, municipal council)
Module 3 - Each constituency elects representatives to committee
Module 4 - Committee attend basic training course
Module 5 - Committee members each recruit volunteers from their own constituency
Module 6 - Identifying sites for resource centres
Module 7 - Training of volunteers
Module 8 - Further committee training and separation of roles
Module 9 - Orphan identification, birth certificates, accommodation, grants, guardians
Module 10 - Setting up resource centre
Module 11 - Running resource centre
Module 12 - Building children's future / job creation / sustainability projects

Modules 6 and 7 and modules 8, 9 and 10 run concurrently.

At the appropriate stage of Ark development, funding proposals will be made to various private and public enterprises to help pay for the training and infrastructure of that particular Ark.

We have appointed two "Ark Builders" in KwaZulu-Natal (both are experienced in Community work) whose job it is to help communities through the modules set out in the field guide. They are supported by administrative staff members. We have also received funding for a similar staff compliment in Gauteng province and have recruited staff.