Alcohol & Drug Recovery Fund

The LightHouse Care Center

The Lighthouse is located 8 km south of Mbabane.

The Lighthouse, Swaziland is an African-operated, community based, registered non-profit center providing care at the prevention level, the intervention level and the residential level.

Efforts include: Concerts and street rallies at the prevention level, concerned counseling at the intervention level, in-house restoration and care at the residential level.

History of the LightHouse Care Center

The Lighthouse ministry started in 1996 by providing a feeding project, funded by collecting food from hotels and restaurants. Evidence of HIV infection among orphaned, abandoned and homeless street children that were fed was extremely high.

Among the first 15 children fed, 14 were HIV positive. It was established that there were two main causes—infection was transmitted to the child by the mother, or sodomy, which was a result of living on the street.

We started a residential center to accommodate needy children who were either infected or affected by HIV. The work was formally founded in April 1997 as Lighthouse Care Centers.

The Program

We work with social welfare and Save the Children Fund by receiving abandoned children from them.

We work the streets to take street children off the streets who want to come off.

We place children in our homes by age, behavioral patterns and distance from known relatives.

We work on reconciliation with relatives who would be interested in taking the children back into their homes.

We provide a safe and structured routine environment for both children and youth.

We have adapted and use the successful, Christ-centered Teen Challenge program with children and youth.

We provide education in government schools for children and youth.

Children are being saved, discipled and healed physically, emotionally and spiritually.

The Need

The need continues to accelerate at an alarming rate. Swaziland now has the second highest HIV percentage in the world. The latest government figures reported in The Times of Swaziland in 2002 revealed a 40% infection rate. Forty percent of the country’s population is under the age of 15.

United Nations Development Project (UNDP) states that the current life expectancy in Swaziland is 37 years, and by 2010 it will be 27.

UNDP states that 12% of rural Swaziland is populated by “child led” family units. These are families with no parents as a result of HIV and AIDS.