Money crisis could close Childline

Durban — Childline KZN is on the brink of closure and says it only has enough money to keep its doors open for the next six months.

Acting director Adeshini Naicker said their monthly expenses amount to R600 000, which includes salaries, but if they could raise R1 million before the end of the year they would “be fine”.

She said they had started fund-raising campaigns to keep operating normally and appealed to businesses and private individuals to come to their aid.

“We’ve lost a lot of funding. The economy is so bad, we are really battling. Besides the Department of Social Development, we don’t have any other major funders. We have been aggressively trying to do fund-raising activities here and there to try to make up,” said Naicker.

Childline KZN is a non-profit organisation that works to protect children from all forms of violence and offers in person and telephone counselling services. It has been operating for 38 years and gets an average of 10 000 calls for help a month. It is open 24-7, 365 days a year and while the services are primarily for children, parents, caregivers and even teachers who need advice call them.

“The trend in the last few years is we’re getting a lot more calls from adults seeking advice on behavioural issues, how to deal with their children, what kind of strategies they should put in place at home, safety structures. It is a really good thing because previously we didn’t have parents that were that involved in their children’s lives.”

Naicker said apart from the head office in Durban they had 16 sub-offices in the province and 39 full-time staff.

She said 50% of their staff were already on minimum wages and none had received salary increases for a long time. They had cut fuel costs as much as possible and there was no money to replace any broken equipment.

“We would have to make drastic cuts, which would mean retrenchment, and we don’t want to do that,” said Naicker.

She said reducing their staff count would affect the services they offered.

“We have a shortfall of about R220 000 a month. That’s what we battle to try to make up every month.”

Naicker said because they were a registered non-profit they could issue donors a Section 18 certificate for tax purposes.

She said companies could also assist by providing them with security services, car tracking and gardening services.

On August 22, Childline KZN will run a telethon to raise funds and appealed to people to donate an hour of their time to make calls from the Childline office and raise money for the organisation.

“We ask people to come in and call their contacts and ask them to donate to us. We hope it is going to really, really help us,” said Naicker.

Anyone willing to help or make a donation can email her on director@ childlinekzn.org.za

Independent on Saturday