OUR STORY

Due to insufficient government funding covering no more than one third of our operational costs, state capture, government corruption and a junk status economy, our Founder and CEO of these facilities, Roy Harris, is now reaching out to the United States to establish a US Development Office. The goal is to initiate affiliations and associations in the US to help us sustain these projects which many individuals and institutions helped establish and partnered with over the three decades.

All our current beneficiary nonprofits were founded by Roy and Matilda Harris over 30 years ago. Our nonprofits were founded from 1991 onward with the dawn of de-institutionalization of long term psychiatric patients in the Western Cape Province, South Africa. These patients were soon to be discharged with nowhere to go, which culminated in our first group home in 1991 with little-to-no government support or financial contributions from the state.

In 2013, Roy Harris met with the Head of Health (HOH) in the Western Cape Province of South Africa, to discuss additional and proper funding for their facilities. The HOH concluded that "if you cannot make it, [on about USD $6.00 per day per patient] close the facilities and put the mentally ill patients back on the street." This was a severe blow not just to our Founder, but to our entire organization.

These events, together with rampant government corruption and lack of funding yet increased onerous demands made by the government, led Roy Harris to start this development nonprofit, USA4RSA Foundation Inc., to avert another "Esidimeni Scandal" and to ensure long-term continuity for these facilities.

A costing study spearheaded by the Chief Financial Officer of the Department of Health (Western Cape) and Roy Harris, concluded in 2013 that the Actual Cost Per Patient was 300% more than what was received by the nonprofit. 5 years later, not much has changed.

We receive very little from our government.

The South African Health Department (Western Cape) contributes less than USD $10 per patient per day. With this small amount, we provide 24 hour holistic care at 7 facilities for our 300+ beneficiaries, most in the no-income group with no or very little family support. Almost no beneficiaries have any income sources apart from their USD $125 per month (USD $4 per day) disability grant. We provide medical care with medical staff; a clinic with satellite clinics; a frail care center for mentally ill and severe and profoundly physically and intellectually disabled patients. Our operations include:

• the acquisition of buildings and all capital expenses like vehicles, medical equipment, furniture, beds, linen, clothes and much more;

• maintenance of buildings, vehicles, medical equipment, catering equipment and more;

• payment of mortgages, rent, utilities, catering and more;

• payment of salaries of 120 full-time employed staff members;

• funding for our own caregiver training school where 30 to 40 students from previously disadvantaged communities are trained each year as mental health caregivers. Community Mental Health Academy (CMHA) operates in Cape Town at no cost to students.

  For the last 20+ years, promising students from poor communities are identified to do our 1 or 2 year training course. Many of these students successfully find work as caregivers at private hospitals after their training based on our course as a form of a "breaching course." Some are accepted at Nursing colleges to further their careers and others apply for full time positions at our facilities.

Regardless of daily, monthly and yearly stressful budget constraints, we at CMHP, KMT and USA4RSA pride ourselves in excellent stewardship, good financial management and innovative ideas to ensure our beneficiaries live life, with a smile, as often as possible.

We also do advocacy, development and prospect research and strategic planning to establish affiliations and associations between South Africa as a developing country and the USA as a developed country. We seek to create interpersonal ties as a way to acquire knowledge from the developed to the developing world and as a possible alternative to more formal knowledge transfer mechanisms and joint ventures. The 'enabler', of course, is new technology, science and methodology.