Enquiries

Activities

Action groups coordinate activities on a daily basis, supported by Centre Coordinators:

Centre-based and community-based activities: social support: peer support, cultural celebration, discussion groups, games, arts & crafts (knitting, sewing, beading, candle and soap-making), praise and worship, prayer circle, music, information and awareness sessions, outings and events

Food Security

Garden Project

When the Covid-19 pandemic started threatening food security across the world, NOAH took action. We shifted the NOAH model from meal provision to the establishment of sustainable, communal and household-led food gardens. This has seen the gradual transformation of available garden spaces at the Woodstock and Khayelitsha Centre premises and individual households into flourishing veggie gardens.

A couple of years in, the benefits of this project are already evident. With 83 individual food gardens and 7 communal gardens, residents can eat, share or sell fresh, homegrown veggies that provide nutritious and healthy meals. The garden project helps generate significant cost-savings for our elders, their families and neighbours.

Nutrition Education

Through the Woodstock and Khayelitsha clinics, partnerships with the University of Cape Town, and wonderful volunteers, NOAH members have access to simple and easy to implement nutritional advice.

Residents can learn about the nutritional value of different foods, managing monthly grocery bills, cooking homemade, healthy and balanced meals and more.

Thanks to the Health team’s expertise, members can also benefit from specialized advice on topics such as managing blood sugar levels for diabetics.

Buy-in-bulk

With the cost of food spiraling out of control, making ends meet has become a struggle. The more vulnerable seniors started skipping meals or borrowing money from one another.

NOAH residents came up with a self-help solution, Buy-in-Bulk, or affectionately called BIB. After residents place their staple food orders with BIB and using NOAH’s collective buying power, BIB buys food products at wholesale prices and passes on the discount. Stock is stored in a shipping container at one of the NOAH houses and on payment, buyers collect their goods or have them delivered for a small fee.

Home Industry

Loaves, rolls, biscuits, jams, cakes, confectionaries, heritage foods, made to order!

In line with NOAH’s strengths-based approach to development and member independence – we are proud to announce the NOAH Home Industry. Operating from the newly refurbished Woodstock Community Kitchen, NOAH members use the space and equipment to bake and cook local dishes and tasty delights to sell to friends and family. Pies, samosas, cakes and pizzas are some of the delicious items coming out of the very busy kitchen. Some members have even catered for private events to boost their income.

MORE INFORMATION AND ORDERS: orders@noah.org.za

Healing and Prayer

”In circles we learn to listen our way back to one another. We listen more and speak less. We listen to understand. We do not listen to react or attack. We listen to hear and see one another’s soul and, in that way, we find a way to live together with understanding, compassion and repair.

Healing and Prayer

Many of our beneficiaries lived with unprocessed trauma brought about by adverse childhood experiences and difficult adulthood – especially living under Apartheid. NOAH’s psycho-social approach focuses on a collective healing modality with individual counselling should the need to be evident, coupled with referrals to other organisations and institutions.

The Safe Circle approach aims to increase the capacity of the NOAH community to reduce adversity. NOAH beneficiaries learn to incorporate new ways of being with self and others that change how people experience and deal with the world. Understanding how this happens, requires knowledge of the brain, adversity, trauma responses and how healing can take place, individually and communally.

NOAH retains the services of two trained counsellors in Woodstock, Khayelitsha and Athlone. Based on the safe circles approach, they provide conflict resolution skills for those living in community and one-on-one support to members struggling with various aspects of their lives. A wonderful by-product has been the improvement in the way internal house conflict has been better managed and resolved.

Gender-based violence and abuse prevails and through the individual counselling service those cases have been swiftly referred and addressed.

This has been an amazing blessing and we have seen lives changed for the good as they have been given new and helpful skills to make good choices and live their lives to the full. The next step will be to embark on a lay counsellor programme where NOAH residents will be trained to offer this support to others in their communities.

Another aspect of Healing is spirituality. For this reason, a prayer group is led by our residents and held every morning. Everyone is welcome, and a safe and spiritual space is provided for all to share, reflect and offer up their prayer requests. It sets the tone for the day and brings a sense of peace and purpose to all those who attend.

As a result of this approach, 100% of all our members reported an awareness of their own and others’ emotions and 100% reported an awareness of their own needs in a 2023 assessment.

Health

Entrance Requirements to NOAH Clinic

All applicants for the NOAH Clinic need to be 60 years and over and receive a SASSA pension as their sole income. They will need to provide us with proof of SASSA pension membership and produce their ID document. On application potential members are informed of our consultation fee of R70 which needs to be paid on the day of their visit.

Waiting List

NOAH clinics are capped as far as the number of clinic members we can accommodate. We have capacity for a max of 300 members per clinic which allows us to manage interventions more closely and track individuals treatment and progress. We have a waiting list for those wanting to join the clinic. When there is an available space the next in line on the list gets contacted.

Get in touch on 021 447 6334 to add your name to the waiting list.

Contact Us

Donate

Commitments

Activities

Garden Project

Nutrition Education

Buy-in-bulk

Home Industry

Loaves, rolls, biscuits, jams, cakes, confectionaries, heritage foods, made to order!

Healing and Prayer

Entrance Requirements to NOAH Clinic

Waiting List