AIDSMO Trust t/a Lebone Village

In 2000, what the Lebone Village website calls a "candle" was lit — a candle that would grow, over more than two decades, into one of the Free State's most recognised and most holistic community care organisations. The AIDS Mission Outreach Trust, which Lebone Village operates under, was founded in direct response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic's most devastating effect on children: the creation of a generation of orphans, stripped of parents, stripped of family, stripped of the fundamental experience of being known and loved.

The name "Lebone" is Sesotho for "light" — fitting for an organisation that has received the Bloemfontein Institution of the Year award and earned a reputation for transforming the lives of some of the city's most vulnerable children and families. Lebone sits at 177 Springbok Road in Bloemspruit, a peri-urban area just outside Bloemfontein near the airport, and is accessible from the city via the Dewetsdorp/Heidedal off-ramp.

Five Integrated Sections

Lebone House Residential care for orphaned and vulnerable children — providing a home, food, and the experience of family. Lebone does not describe itself as running an institution; its aim is explicitly to provide an alternative to the children's own family when there is no family, approximating the warmth, stability, and belonging of a real home. Most children at Lebone have been orphaned or made vulnerable by HIV/AIDS.

Lebone Counselling Therapeutic counselling services for residents and the community. For children who have experienced loss, abandonment, trauma, and disrupted attachment, counselling is not optional — it is the foundation on which all other recovery is built. Lebone Counselling addresses trauma, grief, identity, and the complex psychological aftermath of orphaning and instability.

Lebone Edu Centre Educational support and access — ensuring that Lebone's children attend school, complete their schooling, and are supported through their academic journey. The Edu Centre reflects the understanding that education is both a right and a long-term protective factor: children who complete their schooling have vastly better life outcomes.

Lebone Skills Development A vocational skills and life skills development programme designed to equip residents and community members with practical, marketable skills for employment. Lebone explicitly aims to train for interdependence rather than dependence — building people's capacity to take ownership of their own destinies and one day contribute positively to their communities.

Lebone Agriculture A working agricultural programme that produces food for Lebone's residents while teaching practical farming and food production skills. This dual function — nutritional and educational — reflects Lebone's holistic model.

Exiting Strategy

Lebone Village explicitly names the importance of a proper exiting strategy for its children — the planned, supported transition into independent young adulthood for children who have grown up in the Village's care. Without active preparation for independence, children who have been institutionalised or in alternative care face enormous risk when they age out. Lebone plans for this from the beginning.

Relevance to GBV Survivors

Lebone is not a GBV shelter or counselling service for adult survivors. Its primary beneficiaries are children and families affected by HIV/AIDS and poverty. However, Lebone is relevant to this directory in several specific ways: children removed from abusive homes, or children whose parent is in a GBV crisis shelter and temporarily unable to care for them, may need exactly the kind of residential care and counselling that Lebone provides. The Lebone Counselling section is available to the broader community, making it a potential counselling referral for survivors in the Bloemfontein area. And Lebone's skills development programme may be relevant to survivors rebuilding economic independence.