The “Face the People” exhibition

In this multi-media exhibition of portraits, photographs, stories and a video production you will be transported into the world of grassroots, community health workers. “Face the People” challenges our understanding of the ethics of care and of health activism. It portrays a world of self -sacrifice, dedication and self-organization. The women and men whose lives and work are captured “face the people” on a daily basis when they open their homes to disabled children, or to survivors of gender-based violence, or when feeding HIV/AIDS orphans. In this exhibition, you “face the people” for whom “Caring” goes far beyond the bounds of duty and where the rewards are the sheer joy and fulfillment people receive when caring for others.

Portraitist and feminist activist, Gabrielle Le Roux painted the portraits from life, whilst the nominees sat and related their stories. Film-maker, Kali van der Merwe visited each community and photographed the work of the volunteers. The collaboration between these enormously talented artists has produced a unique, socially relevant exhibition of portraits depicting the essence of each nominee, photographs that are animated and stories that are moving.

The “Face the People” exhibition has been produced in collaboration with Rita Edwards, head of the Social Capital Project of the Western Cape Provincial Health Department and the District Health Committee Forum that nominated the people whose portraits feature in this exhibition.
Through the exhibition, the Department of Health would like to honour, acknowledge and value the work done by voluntary community health-workers. It is hoped that the exhibition will inspire many of us to become more involved in our communities.

Rekindling the Spirit of Volunteerism

Social Capital is formed when we as community members take the first step, no matter how small, to address a problem in our neighbourhood. When we link up with others for the purposes of self-help or to change our environment we are busy building social capital. When we use our creativity, energy and skills voluntarily to transform our communities from drug and crime-infested zones to places where we feel safe and secure, we are busy building Social Capital.  Volunteers are needed to transform our communities into hubs of culture where music, art drama and sport could replace anti-social activities amongst children and youth. This exhibition is about rekindling the spirit of volunteerism on which our new democracy rests and which we are in danger of losing in a fiercely accumulative society. The people featured in this exhibition serve as an alternative role model. We have drawn on the creativity of the artists as well as the people featured who have told their stories in the most wonderfully expressive and profound way. We know that there are many more stories out there and would like to challenge communities to find the stories and to tell them using our local languages and a variety of cultural forms.

Sharing the Burden of Care

Currently, the greater share of the burden of community-based care is shouldered by the poor, and more particularly, by poor women. Women are the majority in home-based care, and T.B Directly Observable Treatment Support (DOTS) workers as well as those working within the realm of child survival. We hope that this exhibition could stimulate more men and the financially secure to share the burden of voluntary care.

CARE work in all societies is under-valued work. Unpaid CARE work helps to subsidize the main economy by keeping workers healthy at minimal costs to the economy. As unemployment increases the pool of volunteers grows. Could we as government and NGOs do more to build the capacity of volunteers?  Could we as NGOS and Government use the services of our volunteers fairly?
 We see this exhibition as the space within which we could discuss this and other burning issues pertaining to the ethics of CARE.

The Burden of Disease – The Bigger Picture

 Health workers and volunteers work in communities where the burden of disease is compounded by  inadequate water and sanitation, overcrowding, poor nutrition, lack of exercise, trauma, violence,  substance abuse and unprotected sex .It is well known that unequal access to resources and power lay at the basis of these social problems.
The Department of Health is addressing these problems through its facility and community based services. The challenge to the Social Capital Project is to address the socio-economic determinants of ill-health in collaboration with volunteers, NPO/NGOs, other government departments. Social capital formation is thus the GLUE to bring all the role players together.