Community Keepers is a South African non-profit organisation established in 2009 dedicated to improving the mental health and well-being of learners and their caregivers in underserved communities. Our heart is to help schools to build supportive ecosystems where everyone feels a sense of belonging and where learning and development can prosper. We shift the traditional mental health paradigm by embedding dedicated, child-friendly therapy rooms directly on the school grounds, removing barriers to access. Our core activities include destigmatisation, therapeutic counselling and anchoring life-skills. By bringing these services directly to the school, we drastically improve the ratio of support to learners—moving from a strained national average of 1:23,000 down to an accessible 1:990 or lower.
In addition to this, we address local youth unemployment by training local community members in mental health first aid. Through these interventions, we seek to break generational cycles of trauma, de-stigmatise help-seeking behaviour, and restore dignity, ultimately allowing educators to focus on teaching while empowering thousands of vulnerable learners to build resilience, agency, and a sustainable culture of well-being.
Country of Operation: South Africa
Date/Year Founded:Â 03/26/2009
Registration Details:Â Â
067-754-NPO
PBO 930030162
NPC 2008/013270/08
Wishlist:
- Tablets for virtual therapy
- Laptops for social workers
- Airtime and data
- Art supplies for play therapy
- Comforting warm blankets for therapy rooms in schools
Online Platforms:
www,communitykeepers.org
https://www.facebook.com/communitykeepers.org/
https://www.instagram.com/communitykeepers/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/community-keepers-npc-9565ba181/
Cause Highlights
In Bonnievale, we have counsellors at every primary and high school. A whole town is impacted – a whole town. Every child and their caregivers have access to free mental health support, counselling and anchoring life-skill workshops where they build their own toolbox of techniques for lifelong wellbeing. In addition to this – all our mental health first aiders were recruited and trained from the local community and were later enrolled and graduated as Social Auxiliary Workers.
Just imagine if we could do that in every town across South Africa.