Women of Vision

The Mission

WOV's mission is direct: to restore dignity and respect to children, women, and the elderly who have been made vulnerable by abuse, neglect, and lack of resources. The three groups are named together deliberately — because in Westbury, as in many communities shaped by overlapping deprivations, the most vulnerable people are often children growing up in households where women are being abused, elderly people whose families have fractured under the same pressures, and women who are simultaneously being harmed and trying to protect the others.

Orphaned and Vulnerable Children (OVC)

WOV's OVC programme provides targeted support for children identified as most at risk in the Westbury community — children who have lost parents, children living in households where adult care is compromised by substance abuse, domestic violence, illness, or poverty, and children who are otherwise without adequate protection. The programme ensures that these children have a point of contact, a relationship with trusted adults, and access to services and resources that their home environments cannot provide.

Dorcas Day Care Centre (DDCC)

The Dorcas Day Care Centre provides structured early childhood day care for young children in Westbury — a safe, supervised environment where children receive stimulation, care, and appropriate development support while their parents or caregivers work or address their own challenges. Quality affordable childcare is a foundational resource for women escaping abusive relationships or rebuilding their lives; the DDCC serves this function for families in Westbury.

Social Work

WOV's Social Work programme is its most directly GBV-relevant service. The programme's premise — that "many modern illnesses, teenage pregnancies and enactment of abuse are forged through ignorance" — reflects a commitment to addressing root causes alongside immediate needs.

Services include: access to counselling (direct or facilitated); referral to mental health professionals and organisations; referral to legal aid providers; and workshops and targeted interventions. For GBV survivors in Westbury who need counselling or professional mental health support but do not know where to begin, or who need legal assistance in navigating protection orders, divorce proceedings, or child custody matters, WOV's social worker provides the gateway — the trusted local professional who knows the community, knows the systems, and can bridge the two.

Aftercare

WOV's aftercare programme extends the organisation's protection of children into the after-school hours — providing supervised homework support and a safe, structured environment for school-going children who would otherwise return to unsupervised situations after school. In a community where the streets carry real risks for children in the afternoon and evening, aftercare is a concrete protection measure.

Social Entrepreneurship and Garden

WOV's Social Entrepreneurship programme builds financial sustainability for the organisation and, where possible, skills and income for the community members it works with. The Community Vegetable Garden supports food security — a basic resource that underpins everything else, and that is most immediately meaningful for families at the economic margins that WOV serves.

Elderly Care

WOV includes elderly community members within its protective mandate — recognising that older people in communities like Westbury often experience their own forms of neglect, isolation, and vulnerability that mainstream services do not adequately address.

Relevance to GBV Survivors

Women of Vision is not a GBV crisis service. It does not run a shelter or a 24-hour helpline. But for women in Westbury who have experienced abuse — particularly ongoing domestic violence, child abuse within family units, or neglect of vulnerable elderly family members — WOV's Social Work programme is a local, trusted, professional access point that can provide counselling, facilitate referrals to specialist mental health and legal services, and engage with the wider household and community context in which the abuse is occurring. For survivors who are not yet ready for crisis intervention but need support, WOV's long-term community presence and multi-service model makes it a meaningful resource.

Women of Vision: Westbury, Cape Town, Western Cape. Phone: 082 753 0144. Email: info@womenofvision.co.za. Website: womenofvision.co.za. Founded 1996, active since 1997.