The Tyger Bear Foundation

About the Tygerbear Foundation

The Tygerbear Foundation for Traumatised Children and Families was established in 1998 at Tygerberg Academic Hospital in Bellville, Cape Town, in direct response to the escalating rates of trauma in South African children — particularly child sexual abuse and rape. The Foundation specifically cites South Africa's status as having one of the world's highest occurrences of sexual abuse and rape as the impetus for their work, alongside the devastating concurrent impact of HIV/AIDS.

The Foundation has grown through five phases of development: establishing a psychosocial service centre (Phase 1, completed 2000); a Training and Counselling Centre (Phase 2, opened October 2002); a dedicated TygerBear Care Centre (Phase 3, opened December 2008); a Pink & Blue Campaign for public awareness (Phase 4); and the MOBI mobile outreach unit (Phase 5, launched December 2009).

Services

TygerBear Care Centre — a dedicated residential and day-care psychosocial facility on the Tygerberg Hospital estate providing specialised services to survivors of rape, sexual abuse, and other trauma (including HIV/AIDS and cancer) in children and their families. The Centre provides accommodation, counselling, and structured therapeutic programmes within a hospital-adjacent environment, enabling integration with medical care.

Social Work Unit — co-located within Tygerberg Academic Hospital, the Unit provides psychosocial assessment, case management, court preparation, and trauma debriefing to children presenting at the hospital following abuse or trauma — including forensic interface with the hospital's medical teams.

Training and Counselling — the Foundation's Training and Counselling Centre provides professional development for practitioners, social workers, healthcare staff, teachers, and police working with child abuse and trauma survivors, building wider-system capacity to identify and respond to abuse.

MOBI — Mobile Outreach Bear Initiative — a mobile service that takes the Tygerbear's reach beyond the hospital estate into communities, schools, and high-risk areas where children may not be able to access the hospital-based services. MOBI brings psychosocial first response and prevention education directly to vulnerable communities.

Pink & Blue Campaign — a public awareness initiative targeting child sexual abuse prevention, reaching the broader Western Cape public with recognition and reporting education.

Community Significance

Tygerberg Hospital serves the Tygerberg substructure — which includes Bellville, Parow, Khayelitsha, Mitchells Plain, Kraaifontein, and the Cape Flats — one of the most densely populated and socially challenged areas in the Western Cape. The Tygerbear Foundation's location on the hospital estate positions it uniquely to receive referrals from the emergency room, paediatric wards, and forensic medicine unit, giving it a first-response capacity that community-based organisations cannot replicate.