The Hlanganani Children Care Network started in June 2006. This was after VSO (Voluntary Services Overseas) South Africa, an international volunteer sending NGO, did their year review meeting with their partners in Cape Town, March 2006. At this meeting community based partner organisations that work with orphans and vulnerable children, and are being supported by VSO South Africa, stated their wish that it would be good if all those partner organizations working with children and working with VSO should create a network together. So that information can be shared and capacity can be build.

VSO’s aim as a facilitating organization is to build capacity of its partners, mainly community based organisations. VSO does this by

• placing international volunteers,
• facilitating workshops,
• disbursing small grants,
• facilitating exchange visits,
• and facilitating study tours.

(For more information on VSO please see www.vso.org.uk).

VSO South Africa decided to take their partners’ wish seriously and help facilitate the setting up of an “Orphans and Vulnerable Children Network”. The first meeting was with 12 community partner organizations, held at one of the partners; St. Joseph’s Care and Support Trust in Bronkhorst Spruit, June 2006. The partner organizations would now be called members.

A task team of six people was set up during this meeting in order to manage and guide the network and its members.

In April 2007 the network held its 2nd national meeting, organized and sponsored by VSO, at Willow Park in Johannesburg. New member organizations had joined and we had 15 members. At this meeting the members decided to divide the network in four regions in order to make meetings and activities easier to organize.

Four regions of the network:

1. North (Limpopo and Mpumalanga),
2. Middle (Gauteng, North West, Free State),
3. South (KwaZulu Natal and Eastern Cape) and
4. West (Western Cape and Northern Cape)

1. National Head/representative, North region
2. National Head/representative, Middle region
3. National Head/representative, South region
4. National Head/representative, West region
5. Monitoring and Evaluation task team member
6. VSO task team member

Members also decided the network should have regional representatives, who will be working from their region, supporting the national head/representative with any activities/meetings to be done in their region. (See network structure)

After this national meeting, May 2007, the members of the network held a name competition in order to get a new official name for the network. The winning name was: Hlanganani (“come together” in zulu) Children Care Network. This name has been used since July 2007

In June 2008 a national meeting was held in Groblersdal. This national meeting included a visit to Ndlovu Medical Center, one of the members. 17 members came together for a 3-day meeting and re-elected the national task team. At this meeting it was also decided that the Hlanganani Children Care Network should have three working groups working on the main focus areas of the network:

1. Children Rights (West region)
2. Child Participation (Middle region)
3. Psycho Social Support (North region)

Three of the four regions will be managing/representing the workgroups. The North region will be the Psycho and Social Support Group, The Middle Region the Child Participation work group and the West the Children Rights workgroup.

The three workgroups have started their first meetings and are setting up their work plans for the next two years.