Hope Centre now open

ides a nexus of services, community building, and advocacy for the Zimbabwean community in South Africa. It is a project of the Zimbabwe Pastors Forum (ZPF), an ecumenical network of religious leaders concerned with the plight of Zimbabweans. The Hope Centre consolidates the services provided by ZPF but also provides a space for community building and for other organizations to provide services to the Zimbabwean refugee community. Located in the Johannesburg neighborhood of Braamfontein, densely populated with Zimbabweans, refugees and migrants who come to the Hope Centre are greeted by fellow Zimbabwean migrants who ask what the needs of the visitor are. If the visitor has immediate needs such as food or housing, the Hope Centre has established partnerships with religious and secular civic organizations that can provide such immediate aid to which the visitor is referred. At the Hope Centre itself, there are two full-time counselors who address the personal and psychological needs of visitors through individual and group meetings. There are a number of specialty groups that will meet at the Hope Centre including a blind persons’ support group and twice-weekly artists’ groups. Further, a number of local NGO’s have already been invited to facilitate weekly workshops on topics including legal rights and health/HIV. The effect of the activities of the Hope Centre is not only to aid individual refugees and migrants but also to create a community space for Zimbabweans in the Johannesburg area. Weekly women’s, men’s, and youth groups meetings, outings and family picnics are a few of the activities planned.
Zimbabweans in South Africa are often ashamed, or afraid, of their identity. By facilitating community activities, the Hope Centre intends to make Zimbabweans in South Africa proud of their identity. Moreover, the Hope Centre intends to mobilize the Zimbabwean community to advocate for the protection of their human rights, both in Zimbabwe and in South Africa. As one example of this work, the South African Council of Churches has invited the Zimbabwe Pastors Forum, to formulate policy recommendations to be presented to the relevant parliamentary committee through the SA Council of Churches’ parliamentary office in Cape Town. These policy recommendations are being formulated in consultation with visitors of the Hope Centre at special workshops for this purpose. The Zimbabwe Pastors Forum is in the unique position to lead the establishment and management of the Hope Centre because of its moral authority as an ecumenical religious organization and because of its reputation for being above the fray of explicitly political Zimbabwean organizations in South Africa. In addition to the three staff members of the Hope Centre, there are many volunteers who will assist with the operations and projects of the Hope Centre. Volunteer help ranges from facilitation of workshops to triaging visitors at the reception desk. All visitors are invited to participate as volunteers at the Hope Centre and specific volunteer opportunities are posted on the community bulletin board.
The work of the centre is complementary to the work of a number of other NGOs, such as SAWIMA (the Southern African Women’s Institute of Migration Affairs), which assists more than 100 Zimbabwean refugees in completing asylum application forms every day, has agreed to create reciprocal referral letters with the Hope Centre.
The centre will provide a model for integrated, holistic approaches to the millions of Zimbabwean refugees in other parts of South Africa as well as around the world, and it is hoped it will influence the discussion of human rights in South Africa, and will push South Africans to more fully consider what it means to live in a “Rainbow Nation.”
The Hope Center is situated on the 12th floor of Auckland House, 185 Smit Street, Braamfontein. Contact Pastor Robert Murenje on cell (+27) 76 061 0311 or (+27) 76 817 0030.