eThekwini Health Unit partners with NPO to provide free counselling to victims of floods.

KwaZulu-Natal – After traumatic floods devastated the Province and left a trail of carnage and over 400 deaths, the eThekwini Health Unit recently requested assistance from Scientology Volunteer Ministers to provide supportive trauma counselling to survivors of the flood as well as life skills development for communities.

Deeply worried about the survivors and the state of their social workers in combating this traumatic experience, the eThekwini Health Unit signed a partnership last week to collaborate with the Scientology Volunteer Ministers after seeing the results of their work done in Molweni counselling the survivors of the floods.

The national NPO travelled from their headquarters in Gauteng to provide immediate relief after the devastating floods. Upon arriving in KZN, they set-up teams to assist in search and rescue operations, donated food parcels, blankets, organised major clean-ups and provided psychosocial spiritual counselling.

Ms. Sandra Zungu, the Social Health and Quality Assurance Manager in the department had met with the team before and saw firsthand the impact the team left behind. In her words, all the places her department has visited to do assessments have found that all the residents cannot stop talking about the counselling sessions they received from Volunteer Ministers.

“As briefly discussed, the Health Unit: Social Health would appreciate the collaboration with you and your organisation to assist and provide trauma counselling and support to the survivors of the KZN floods.” – Ms. Zungu.

And then asks to train in the Tools for Life, “In addition, the skills development of communities will be greatly appreciated since it will form part of the therapeutic process and healing journey.”

Mandy Pelser, a representative of the Scientology Volunteer Ministers who went there from Joburg to assist said “From having seen the results on the people to whom we delivered this counselling too, of course we want as many people to be helped. It is such an honor to be working with the department to bring this relief on a large scale. The floods have caused emotional and mental trauma to a lot of people and I think that this partnership is going to benefit the community greatly”.

At the official partnership signing meeting held last week, Ms. Gugulethu Bhengu, the Deputy Director for Social Health for eThekwini Municipality said “we intend to formalize this partnership and work together going forward”

After the partnership was signed, both parties immediately began planning to tackle the issue at hand.

“This is fantastic. I can see that this is going to help a lot of people. We are looking forward to a great working relationship, and making a difference”, concluded Ms. Zungu.

The Volunteer Ministers will also be delivering their TOOLS FOR LIFE Skills development programme written by L. Ron Hubbard to the community at no cost and have affirmed that they will continue to work with the community for as long as needed. They have already trained dozens of community members who have since made a huge change in their communities.

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