COVID-19 lockdown and Non-profit organizations the public, e.g. academic reports, and Newsletter.
Breast Cancer Support Pretoria (BCSP) is a local support group for breast cancer survivors, family members as well as women recently diagnosed across South Africa.
Our annual events has had a significant negative impact due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Breast cancer treatment, especially chemotherapy has a significant impact on immunity and overall susceptibility to external infections. COVID-19 has made this risk even higher for such individuals.
Annual grant funding for all non-profit organizations has also been halted, causing any further activities part of our annual event planning to be on hold until the financial crises our country is currently facing can be resolved.
There are currently over 220 000 non-profit organizations registered with the Department of Social development, of which many dependant on funding and donations to support their operations.
BCSP’s in-person events of up to 40 women has had a 3 month close down. Since the majority of our members are based in rural settings, the possibility of online lectures/events are limited to those women in areas with appropriate infrastructure and network capabilities.
BCSP is currently promoting joint ventures with university of Pretoria and the Department of Radiography (Faculty health Sciences) to allow students the opportunity for Community Engagement.
But due to the lockdown periods and online teaching methods, the students were not able to attend these sessions.
BCSP will be hosting a joint venture with Tateni in Mamelodi during July, where Cancer care packages will be delivered, but with restricted items and strict infection control measures to ensure the safety of all recipients of the packs.
In future, the need for contingency plans during a global pandemic should be provided to all non-profit organizations so that a collaborate support structure is developed and assisted by government to uphold the needs to vulnerable members of a NPO.
Unprecedented challenges in the upcoming months lie ahead, with focus to “ on the ground needs”, keeping new interventions aligned with the NPO’s current scope and vision.
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