Eziko Sipheka Sisophula: Community Based Participatory Research for Sustainability

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In the South African context, we realize that alongside existing approaches to the prevention and treatment of HIV and AIDS, there is a need to integrate culturally situated, contextually appropriate, and place-based processes. Such approaches are rooted in Nguni foundations that ground activities within cultures and languages of different groups to show the interrelatedness of HIV/AIDS, other social malaises that aggravate this scourge, environmental, cultural, economic and social sustainability. Eziko, i.e. around the hearth, therefore frames a community based participatory research around sipheka sisophula everyday processes and practices within the Nguni homestead. Sipheka means (we train and groom), and sisophula, (we send back to communities) to foster co-engaging programs that are relevant to local issues and concerns. Therefore, community based participatory research serves to deepen an understanding of the holistic view of sustainability. To ensure the continuity of Eziko Sipheka Sisophula, whose goal is prevention and treatment of HIV and AIDS, and other social malaises such as poverty, teenage pregnancy, and unemployment that aggravate this pandemic, a holistic view of environmental, cultural, and social sustainability grounds this project.

Stream: Cultural Sustainability

Paper: A paper has not yet been submitted.

For the past fifteen years, I have been a professor in the Department of Human Environmentla Studies at Central Michigan University (CMU). My areas of specialization is Human development, Indigenous Education, and HIV and AIDS in the rural areas of South Africa. I chose SA because I am originally from the rural areas of the Eastern Cape Province. During the Summer (June-July, 2004), a colleague and I with five CMU students visited four communities in the Eastern Cape. We worked with the Departments of Education and Social Development of the Eastern Cape Province and four Community Based Organization (CBOs) to assess the condition of AIDS orphans, and other at-risk children. In 2005 I founded Eziko Sipheka Sisophula: Multiple Skills Development Center to address the psychological, emotional, education, health, spiritual and legal needs of AIDS orphans and other vulnerable children.