Neo Birth

Neo Birth Care Center is an organization that is partnered with Tapologo’s OVC program. The vision is “to care for, counsel and equip the community of Rustenburg and the Northwest Province with knowledge and skill to make informed decisions in everyday real life situations”. Neo Birth offers training and development for basic life skills, psychosocial care, parental skills, HIV/AIDS awareness, foster care, and counseling skills. Neo Birth is a counseling center for HIV/AIDS, abuse, domestic violence, pre-abortion, and teenage pregnancies. Neo Birth is free of charge and is open to walk-ins off the street.

Neo Birth receives many donations of clothes, baby supplies, and toys. When someone comes into the center in need, they are often given these donated supplies from the storeroom. Once a week Neo Birth opens the storeroom to the public to sell the clothes and supplies. They do this in order to make a small profit to keep the organization running. The storeroom was a disaster—filthy and very disorganized. One of our projects from last week was to revamp the storeroom. What a project. After hours upon hours of folding, organizing, cleaning, and taking out frogs, we managed to turn the storeroom into a makeshift shop—a place that people would not feel ashamed to receive clothes and supplies from, and a place that could attract paying customers. We ended our day very filthy and sore.

Neo Birth has a playroom that is used for play therapy. This too was a disaster—toys EVERYWHERE, filthy toys, empty peanut butter jars, and a wasp’s nest. The playroom was our project for today. We took out the trash, dirty toys to be washed, and even DESTROYED the wasp’s nest. Yes, lives were taken. We regret this, but it was for the children. We ended up having a little fun with this project. We arranged the room into something we thought we would have fun playing in. We arranged the toys in an appealing way—we set up the mega Barbie outside of a castle with dozens of green army men protecting her from the robot man. Working hard.

Neo Birth has a collection of books that they lend out to Freedom Park. Today we entered in all the names, authors, and genres of books into the computer database. I felt frustrated with this work. I honestly thought that it was pointless. I could not picture this database being put to any use. However, I am only here to help, in whatever way Neo Birth feels is necessary.

Neo Birth is a Christian-affiliated organization. I was first tipped off by this during our introduction where we were told that they counsel people against abortion. I later noticed many of the posters about “walking with God”. Most of the books we entered into the database fell under the genre “spiritual growth”. On our first day working at Neo Birth, one of the women asked if we were theology students. I was then incredibly aware of my “raise a little hell” tattoo. While I was doing the mindless manual labor of cleaning and organizing, I thought a lot about the religious message Neo Birth is trying to send. I came to the conclusion that while I don’t agree with some of the messages, I agree with the help Neo Birth is providing to people in need. However, I could not seem to justify the anti-abortion stance the organization takes. I could not see how one could counsel a possibly vulnerable, HIV positive, teenaged, pregnant woman to see that she only has one option. But this is just my view, and Neo Birth has another.