Community Action Towards a Safer Environment (CASE)

About CASE

Community Action Towards a Safer Environment (CASE) was founded in 2001 by Lane Benjamin, a Clinical Psychologist, who identified a critical and urgent need for trauma intervention in Hanover Park — a community on the Cape Flats where gang violence, domestic abuse, and social breakdown create compounding cycles of trauma. CASE was established in direct response to the rising level of violence and a visible decline in relational values in the community.

CASE operates from the Mount View Secondary School premises on Athwood Road, Hanover Park — embedded within the community it serves rather than operating from outside it. The organisation is run entirely by volunteers of all ages drawn from Hanover Park itself, making it a genuinely community-rooted structure.

Services

• Trauma intervention and crisis counselling — CASE's founding mandate is trauma support, providing psychological first-response and ongoing support to individuals and families affected by violence, abuse, and GBV.
• GBV support — specific support for survivors of gender-based violence in Hanover Park, including counselling, group work, and referrals.
• Community transformation — CASE works as a catalyst for broader change in relational values and community safety, recognising that violence is sustained by social norms and community dynamics that require deliberate transformation.
• Youth and family programmes — working with young people and families to break cycles of violence and build alternative futures.
• Volunteer development — training and developing community volunteers of all ages to provide first-response support to their neighbours.

Community Context

Hanover Park has one of Cape Town's highest rates of gang violence and domestic abuse. The community's isolation — geographically surrounded by highways and socially cut off from resources — means that community-based organisations like CASE are often the only accessible support for residents who cannot travel or who fear exposure in formal settings. CASE's volunteer model and school-based location make it uniquely accessible to the community.