ChiFi

Children of Fire (ChiFi), situated in Auckland Park, is a registered charity that helps burns survivors - the only charity of its kind in Africa. In South Africa alone, approximately 15 000 children are burned every year.  The children that seek help from the charity have been badly burned - either by fire, chemicals, electricity or hot liquids - leaving them scarred, disfigured and sometimes physically disabled.  In many cases, the children are very young when they were burned, and as a result, they face many years of painful operations ahead of them to regain some quality of life.  During the 14 years that it has been in existence, ChiFi has supported more than 250 children with their medical needs as well as providing assistance with education and legal aid where necessary. ChiFi is a non-profit organisation that relies totally on donations to keep its doors open.

Activities

ChiFi’s core activities are:

• Reconstructing bodies, lives and minds of severely burned children and young people in Africa
• Safety education (injury prevention) and medical research
• Monitoring and promoting intermediate technology to make communities safer
• Disaster mitigation largely in greater Johannesburg, when it has resources.

 Listed below are a few of the current activities that ChiFi is involved in: 

1. Every year ChiFi organises activities such as a climb up Mount Kilimanjaro or a hike in the Drakensberg mountains to build the confidence of burn survivors by involving them in fun, educational and challenging endeavours.  In January 2011, ChiFi hopes to take a group of approximately 20 teenage burn survivors on a trip to climb Mount Cameroon.

2. ChiFi  is involved in outreach projects in Kinshasha, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and in Tunis in Tunisia. It has also been involved in many other exciting medical initiatives such as a Swiss surgical workshop in which two top Swiss surgeons visited South Africa.

3. ChiFi initiated the UMashesha (quick movers) project which involves volunteers assisting the victims of fires by distributing disaster relief recovery bags at the scene of a fire.  The UMashesha are trained in fire fighting and First Aid, and help educate the people in their communities about fire prevention.

4. ChiFi also runs a Sunday library every week (continuously for at least 11 years now). Several volunteers go to Joe Slovo squatter camp in Coronationville and run activities for the kids who live there. The activities may include things such as disaster prevention games, hygiene lessons, reading stories, lessons of different themes e.g. geography/ marine environment, yoga, singing, colouring-in, South African celebrations as well as community safety topics.

5. The Johannesburg School for Blind, Low Vision and Multiple Disability Children is a sister charity of Children of Fire. It was founded primarily to cater for Dorah, the first burned child, and then the needs of blind children as there is no other blind school in the Johannesburg area (the nearest being Sibonile in Kliprivier). The School also caters for disabled children who have been rejected by the state system. It is located in Auckland Park.