Diepsloot is a poorly resourced community on the outskirts of Johannesburg with a high incidence of violent crime and gender-based violence including domestic violence, sexual violence and child abuse.

With a population size guessed to be between 350 000 – 500 000, the community is expansive and brimming with life but also growing social problems. Contributing factors include poverty, high rates of unemployment, racial tensions, and substance abuse. A lack of access to basic services such as water, electricity, refuse collection, and education perpetuates tensions. Furthermore, within the Diepsloot community there is limited access to mental health care as a response to the violence, trauma, and struggles of daily life.  

 
But the people of Diepsloot are strong. There is love, kindness, and resilience with in each and every person. Given the chance, the children and adults from this community can not only heal, but break the downward spiral and prevent themselves from being caught up again in the cycles of poverty and violence prolific in Diepsloot. 

We have seen vulnerable families like this achieve freedom from the trap of poverty and violence, gain the skills to make positive choices for themselves and seek out opportunities that were never possibilities before. Shumbashaba empowers people to recognize opportunities, to discover their ability to choose different outcomes for themselves that embrace their strengths and unique skills so they can build a future for themselves that is meaningful and purposeful.

Shumbashaba is an impact organisation that has been working with members of the Diepsloot community for the past fifteen years. We are members of the Diepsloot stakeholder’s forum and an active participant in the Diepsloot gender-based violence forum and Local Drug Action Committee (LDAC). Shumbashaba’s community involvement includes: participation in the planning and implementation of community events, explicitly addressing gender-based violence, collaborations with government and community organizations in the delivery of programmes that respond and prevent GBV. These programs are aimed at providing information and preventing social ills through school talks, facilitating workshops, and providing counseling services.

 
Shumbashaba has collaborated with Lawyers Against Abuse to provide counselling that incorporates horses to survivors of GBV in addition to providing psycho-social support to healthcare workers from the Charlotte Maxebe hospital.

The psycho-educational growing great generation programme has been implemented in conjunction with a number of different communities organisations; as an adjunct to life orientation curricula in a couple of Diepsloot based schools, a personal development programme for youth members of community organisations. The Shumbashaba mental and behavioral health programs are developed and facilitated by a licensed mental health professionals.

We believe that self-worth, confidence, healing, and empowerment are best built when we acknowledge the multiple ways that those ways of being can be brought about in people.

Therapy is a space where you are safe to be yourself, to heal, and to realise your potential.