10/06/2026
👏👏ADC Counselling Hub creating lasting impact for our communities
A room that listens: how the ADC Counselling Hub is changing
lives in Joza
Free psychological counselling has been quietly running at the Assumption Development Centre since 2022. The numbers and the research suggest something is working, reports Lufuno Masindi.
Most people walk into the Assumption Development Centre (ADC) in Joza for something practical - a skill, a certificate, a way to stretch their finances. What many discover, somewhere between the job training and the life skills workshops, is something else: a room, a conversation, and someone willing to listen.
That room is the ADC Counselling Hub, run by Rhodes University's Psychology Department inside the centre. Professor Megan Campbell, who leads the project, presented its progress at the International Community Engagement Conference at Rhodes earlier this month.
The ADC is already well known in the community for entrepreneurship training, matric second-chance programmes and small business support. Since 2022, it has also become a place where people can access free psychological counselling.
"They come for practical things," Campbell explained. "A skill, a certificate, a way to make their finances stretch a little further."
Presenting alongside psychology honours students Lerato Mota and Liyabona Notuku, Campbell described how the counselling hub emerged from a gap the ADC had identified years earlier.
"What the ADC didn't have was any kind of psychological or psychosocial support for people who were already making use of its services," she said.
The hub now operates with 12 master's-level student psychologists and six intern counselling psychologists, all supervised by registered professionals.
The numbers show how quickly the need has grown. In its first year, the hub provided counselling to 39 adult clients. By 2025, that number had risen to 153 adults and children. Workshop attendance increased from 327 people to 581 over the same period.
For Campbell, those numbers reflect a growing trust. Word has spread through Joza that the service helps.
The workshops reveal the kinds of struggles many residents are carrying: trauma, anxiety, stress, difficult relationships and emotional overwhelm.
"It really seems to be about how do I understand my emotions," Campbell reflected. "How do I regulate them in better ways? How do I make sense of past experiences that have been painful and traumatic for me?"
Most of the people accessing the service are young, often between 15 and their late twenties. Many arrive at the ADC for entirely different reasons and discover the counselling hub along the way.
Campbell and her colleagues also wanted to know whether the service was genuinely helping people. Alongside attendance figures, the team measured changes in psychological distress among clients receiving counselling. In a smaller group of clients who completed assessments before and after treatment, the research showed reductions in depression, anxiety, trauma symptoms and su***de risk.
"We have been able to see quite a marked shift in distress," Campbell said. "That interaction of being seen, being heard, being validated - not feeling so alone in managing what are often some very overwhelming challenges - seems to be a very important shift for people."
The project also shapes the students working there. Many psychological models, Campbell explained, are developed in very different social and economic contexts. Working in Joza pushes students to think carefully about how therapy works in South Africa and how care can become more accessible and meaningful in local communities.
"It gives them an opportunity to see to the extent to which the theoretical models that we're learning generalise to the South African population," she said.
Mental health stigma remains a challenge, and many clients struggle to continue attending sessions because of work, childcare responsibilities and financial pressure. In response, the hub also hosts mental health awareness events and community outreach initiatives.
For Campbell, one of the most important parts of the project is that it asks a question often missing from university research: what does the community gain?
"I think we underestimate the profound burden that psychological distress places on us," she said. "If we have spaces where we can process our hurts, our pains, our traumas, we can experience more emotional regulation, which creates a lot of subjective well-being, peace, safety and harmony."
In Joza, that space already exists. Quietly, steadily, more people are finding their way to it each year.
The Assumption Development Centre Hub in Joza, Makhanda is a partnership between Rhodes University's psychology department, RU Clinic and the Rhodes Counselling Centre. The demand for therapy has increased exponentially since it began. Photo: RUCE
