About Philani Fund USA, Inc.

Philani Fund USA, Inc. is a non-profit corporation whose mission is to raise funds for and make grants to the Philani Nutrition Centres Trust, a non-profit community-based organization providing health, nutrition, and preschool education services to children in the informal communities outside Cape Town, South Africa. Philani Fund USA is a charitable organization granted tax exemption by the United States Internal Revenue Service; contributions to it are tax deductible within the parameters of the Internal Revenue Code.

The Philani Nutrition Centres Trust has been working in its communities since 1979, assisting children, pregnant women and mothers through a network of community outreach workers, nutrition centers, medical clinics and six preschool education program sites. Mothers are offered training in weaving and other crafts, with the goal of providing them with skills that generate income and will enable them to support themselves and their children. Community outreach workers and preschool teachers are women who are drawn from the community and given appropriate training. In 2008 Philani added an Orphans and Vulnerable Children Program for households headed by children or grandmothers, and a dental project. To find out more about the Philani Nutrition Centres Trust, please click on the link to its website, above.

An estimated one million people live in the informal communities (sometimes referred to as “townships”) outside Cape Town that are served by Philani. They live in simple cement houses or make-shift dwellings of corrugated iron, wood, and plastic, many overcrowded and without water and sanitation. A lack of basic services, widespread unemployment and concentrated poverty result in malnutrition and poor health in its residents. Women and children are most vulnerable. Twenty per cent of the population is under the age of six; without intervention, one in ten will be underweight for age and one in four will not reach full growth potential. The spread of HIV/AIDS in these communities, where the health and nutrition of women and children are already precarious, has further overwhelmed the available services and resources.

The Philani Nutrition Centres Trust has a legally registered “Trust Deeds” as its governing document, as required by South African law, and a Certificate of Registration of Nonprofit Organization issued by the government of South Africa. One of its founders and its medical director is Dr. Ingrid leRoux, a physician born in Sweden and resident in South Africa. Its patron in South Africa is Archbishop Desmond Tutu.