‘Creating an enabling environment for community-based responses to poverty eradication’

Siyabhabha Trust Caritas SA is the non-profit development agency of the South African Catholic Bishops Conference mandated to operate in South Africa, Botswana and Swaziland. It is governed by a Board of Trustees and each of the 29 dioceses are members of Siyabhabha Trust’s General Committee which meets at least once every year to discuss development matters that affect their immediate communities and the country in general. Siyabhabha Trust programmes are conceived on the basis of discussions and resolutions of the General Committee Meeting. The work of ST is guided by the Catholic Church’s Preferential Option for the Poor and the principle of Integral Human Development.  These provide constant and central guidance to all ST programmes.

We therefore recognize that every person’s basic needs should be met holistically and we work directly towards the empowerment of the poor – the voiceless and socially excluded so that they become active participants in their communities. We are committed to providing people affected by poverty from every faith, origin and background, with the means to realize their full potential and become contributors to the common good.

Siyabhabha Trust is also a member of Caritas Internationalis – a global confederation of 165 Catholic organisations working in humanitarian emergencies and international development.

Our overarching ambition is to work at developing best practice models with a view to scaling up and replication. Once these best practice models are well articulated the role of Siyabhabha Trust becomes progressively oriented around providing strategic support for processes such as: Participatory rural appraisal, partnership brokering, supporting relationship building between the dioceses and the programme service providers, mentoring & coaching of staff on the ground, research and monitoring and evaluation. Once this type of relationship is clearly established the role of ST becomes more technical development support with less and less actual programme implementation which is the most costly aspect of any development work, thereby making the programmes on the ground more sustainable.

Contact:

SACBC – Siyabhabha Trust – Caritas SA

399 Paul Kruger Street

P O Box 941

Pretoria 0001

Tel: 012 323 7010

Fax: 012 323 7617

E-mail: cathdev@sacbc.org.za

Director: Fr James Juma

Visit our website: www.siyabhabhatrust.org.za

NPO Number: 006-668-NPO

PBO Number: 930020626