Projects

Hope Trust’s work falls into three main categories:

•  Rescue is mostly focussed upon:
  • Family Welfare: Embracing poverty relief interventions for the very poor and needy, in particular those who are not in a position to care for themselves, either because of illness or age. This aspect of our work is intended to provide short-term welfare, relief or rehabilitation to households or individuals until such time as they are able to stand on their own without needing outside support. This is the gospel in action: caring for the orphans and widows in their distress, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, caring for the sick.

Left: Regular holiday clubs are events at which children are brought together for fun, food and fellowship. These provide opportunities for children to tell their stories and to receive encouragement and prayer.

• Restoration includes:
  • Youth development through sport – notably soccer and netball.
  • Family economic development including anti-poverty initiatives aimed at empowerment and capacity building. This mostly involves training and mentoring in a wide-range of skills such as small business development, home financial management, savings and home food security. This is the work of equipping people to reach their full potential in God, living productive and harmonious lives and being generous givers.

Left: A soccer team from Sweetwaters played a team from Hilton Christian Fellowship. A wonderful time was had by all with the Sweetwaters team teaching the Hiltonians how to play soccer with a thorough beating.

• Empowering includes:
  • Family Life through teaching, training, mentoring in basic life skills
    • parenting
    • healthy living
    • foster parenting
    • small business
    • savings
    • home food security etc.

Left: Many young women have graduated through the Parenting Skills course run over 4 days. This programme is proving popular and many older participants have exclaimed that they wish they had had the benefit of such instruction when they were raising their own children. While children are always a focus because of their vulnerability there is a very great need for their adult carers (mother, grandmother, great grandmother, neighbour, aunt etc) to receive teaching on how to raise children. The brokenness of the family in the local society means that many mothers only have instincts for the raising of children and know little of how to intentionally raise them in an atmosphere of love and care.

STILL TO COME…….Developing a foster parenting programme including selection and establishment of “safe houses” coupled with equipping foster carers with the skills for loving and caring appropriately for OVCs.

Target group:

To date, the main beneficiaries of our work have been residents of Sweetwaters, a very poor and broken community on the outskirts of the city of Pietermaritzburg in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Sweetwaters has an exceptionally high level of unemployment, disease and poverty. Surveys conducted jointly by the government and a local university found that Sweetwaters has one of the highest recorded rates of HIV infection in South Africa. It is also a TB hotspot, with one of  the highest rates of TB infection in the country (and South Africa has one of the highest  incidences of TB in the world)! These high levels of HIV/TB infection have contributed to a breakdown of family life where many orphaned and vulnerable children are growing up without adult supervision or care, are going hungry, are missing out on an education due to an inability to get to school or buy school uniforms, and are open to abuse and exploitation. Child-headed homes are prolific, as are homes headed by elderly grandmothers (gogo’s) who are themselves sickly and needing care and rest. These “gogo’s” are unable to cope financially, physically or emotionally with caring for a household of orphaned grandchildren and great-grandchildren. It is a community in a state of crisis and in need of God’s love, hope and saving grace.

We are convinced that our programmes should be extended to the larger community in Vulindlela (the rural western portion of Msunduzi Municipality – wards 1,2,3,4,6,7,8,9 – which accommodates 250, 000 people (source: Vulindlela Spatial Development Plan, 2017).