We are not visitors here. We live here.
Education of Hope Africa was founded on 7 July 2017 in Kagiso, Mogale City. It is a South African registered, indigenous non-profit and public benefit organisation. It was started by someone who had lived the problem, and it still operates from the community it serves.
In one paragraph
A community-based educational organisation.
Education of Hope Africa (EOHA) is dedicated to providing holistic support to disadvantaged and vulnerable children. We work on access to quality education, academic support, life-skills development and social care services, so that every child has the opportunity to reach their full potential.
Alongside that sits a set of evidence-based social and economic strengthening interventions for youth and women in the excluded, marginalised communities of the West Rand, including HIV-affected, orphaned and vulnerable children and youth.
Through partnerships, advocacy and community engagement we work to create a safe, nurturing environment where children can learn, grow and thrive. We adapt every intervention to the local context and labour-market conditions, and we monitor outcomes so that our approaches can be improved and brought to scale.
What we believe
Young people are partners in development, not a threat to be managed.
EOHA envisions a world where the creative energy and courage of young people, joined to the knowledge of academics and professionals, builds a capacity that helps youth and adolescent girls reach across false boundaries of nationality, race and economic status.
A world where the economy works for people rather than people working for the economy; where universal human rights take precedence over profits; and where longitude and latitude do not determine economic destiny.
The need, in numbers
1 481 child-headed households in one district.
The 2016 Community Survey found 1 481 households in the West Rand District headed by a child under 18. Of those children, 38.5% live in informal dwellings.
These issues are interconnected, and they compound. Child-headed households experience heightened levels of gender-based violence, because the children in them have none of the protective structures an adult caregiver provides. That exposure to abuse and exploitation raises vulnerability to HIV infection. Limited access to healthcare, education and support services raises the health risk again.
Meanwhile the same conditions (scarce resources, unstable housing, adult responsibilities carried by children) steadily close off the education that would have been the way out.
Our long-term goal is the Education of Hope Africa Children’s Home: a safe haven for children who endure abuse, neglect and abandonment, with a specific focus on violence against children. Not only a sanctuary, but the tools to thrive afterwards.
Purpose, vision, mission
Stated plainly, as adopted.
- Affecting the destiny of children, adolescent girls, young women and youth of South Africa.
- Affecting positive change in the lives of young people in every community.
- Fighting HIV/AIDS, STIs, TB and GBVF among youth through information, engagement and practical prevention skills.
- Alleviating poverty through job creation for youth, and enhancing education for children and youth.
- Engaging a racially and economically diverse student constituency on human rights, global poverty and inequality.
- Helping young people and students connect global issues of social and economic injustice with local ones.
- To reach an entire generation of children and youth with a message of hope for today.
- To impact communities with a message of hope and responsibility in the face of real threats (GBV, abuse, STIs, TB, HIV/AIDS, drugs) and social crime prevention.
- Impacting children, adolescent girls, women and youth by networking and creating opportunities for individuals and groups to join community outreach projects.
- Researching and implementing different projects and methods of reaching children, adolescents, women and youth in the communities.
- Creating a network of individuals, companies and groups to help impact children, adolescents and youth in every community.
How we work
Five rules we don’t break.
Most NGO “values” pages are interchangeable. These are ours because they cost us something.
Nothing about young people without young people
Every programme is designed and delivered by people from the community it serves. If a programme can only run with an outsider in the room, we have built it wrong.
Evidence, adapted to here
We take a rigorous, evidence-based approach and then adapt it to local context, labour-market conditions and the social and cultural realities of the West Rand. We monitor outcomes so approaches can be improved and scaled.
No child is a photograph
We do not publish a child’s image or story without written consent from them and their guardian, and consent can be withdrawn at any time, retroactively.
First to respond, last to leave
When social, economic or fiscal crisis strikes, the most vulnerable suffer first. We stay in those settings and do whatever it practically takes for the marginalised and excluded.
We say the real number
Not “impacted thousands”. The number of children who attended, how many times, and how we counted it.
Hold us to these
If you see us break one, write to the board directly. That address is public and it is monitored.
Complaints & whistleblowingThe road so far
2017 to now.
Nine years of work, from a kitchen table in Kagiso to a documented, funded programme with registration in place at the DSD, CIPC and SARS.
Education of Hope Africa is founded
Started in Kagiso, working from a family home, with a focus on adolescent girls at risk of dropping out.
Registered: NPC 2019/613083/08 and NPO 236-182
A formal governance structure and a constituted board. The organisation’s name was entered into the register of nonprofit organisations under the Nonprofit Organisations Act 71 of 1997 on 2 October 2019. Certificate (PDF)
Through lockdown, with help
The South African Jewish Board of Deputies and The Angel Network step in. At that point the organisation supports 75 adolescent girls with sanitary products and homework support, and 56 young mothers and grandmothers with nappies and food parcels. The Saturday Star profiles the work on 28 November.
PBO 930070568: SARS approval, and Section 18A
The SARS Tax Exemption Unit approved EOHA as a Public Benefit Organisation under section 30(3) of the Income Tax Act, with income tax exemption backdated to 30 August 2019. Section 18A(1)(a) approval, the part that lets us issue receipts a South African donor can deduct, took effect on 3 November 2020. Approval letter (PDF)
Meals of Hope expands from one feeding day to three
Cooked meals on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, alongside after-school homework support and a reading club for Grades 4–7.
Thirteen programmes, one district
Education, health and protection, economic strengthening and care, with the Hope Learning Centre and the Education of Hope Africa Children’s Home as the next goals.
The next three to five years
A Hope Learning Centre, with the lights on.
None of what follows exists yet. That is exactly why it is published: so you can check, in three years, whether we did it.
Over the next three to five years we intend to become a strong, sustainable and recognised community-based organisation: a trusted centre of hope, education, nutrition and holistic development for the orphaned, vulnerable and disadvantaged children of Kagiso.
That means growing beyond immediate assistance. A plate of food solves today. We want to be the organisation that changes what a child’s life looks like at nineteen, and we would rather be judged on that than on how many plates we handed out.
The centrepiece is a well-resourced, child-friendly Hope Learning Centre: a safe and conducive place to learn, a nutritious meal, room to develop a talent, and the confidence that comes with having both.
Our ultimate aspiration is not to provide services to children. It is to change life trajectories: moving vulnerable children from circumstances of disadvantage towards education, confidence, independence and meaningful participation in society.
“To become a leading community-based organisation that transforms the lives of vulnerable children through education, nutrition, protection, skills development and sustainable opportunities, building a generation of confident, empowered and hopeful young people.”
Six things that have to be true by then.
Not aspirations. Conditions. If any one of these is still missing in five years, the vision has not happened, whatever the annual report says.
A learning centre of our own
Well-resourced, child-friendly, and not dependent on whether the family home has space that afternoon.
A feeding programme that survives a grant ending
Meals of Hope currently rises and falls with project funding. Sustainable means the kitchen does not close when a funder moves on.
Staff who are qualified, paid and stay
Committed volunteers built this. Continuity for a child means the same adult next term, and that eventually has to be a salary.
Governance that survives an audit
A full board, declared interests, minuted quarterly meetings and independently reviewed financials published here. Where we are now
Impact we can measure, not describe
Outcomes for named cohorts over time, not attendance totals.
Partnerships longer than one financial year
Strong donor relationships that renew. One-off gifts keep the lights on; multi-year commitments are what let us hire, plan and promise a child anything.
The people
The people behind the work.
The people accountable for the work, by name.
Governance
Who holds us accountable.
The board of directors of Education of Hope Africa NPC, and how it oversees the work.
| Name | Role |
|---|---|
| Portia Matamela Mmbidi | Chairperson |
| Olga Rosina Tshukudu | Vice-Chairperson |
| Maserame Elizabeth Moerane | Treasurer |
| Ntaoleng Portia Seseng | Secretary |
| Daphney Keotshepile Makhanda | Vice-Secretary |
Our registered mark. NPO 236-182 · NPC 2019/613083/08 · PBO 930070568.
Board meets quarterly
Minutes are kept and available to funders on request.
Registered & compliant
NPO 236-182, NPC 2019/613083/08, PBO 930070568. Annual returns filed with the DSD and CIPC. Both certificates are published in full. You do not have to ask.
Child safeguarding
The page every children’s charity should have, and most don’t.
We work directly with children and with adolescent girls. That carries a duty. Here is exactly how we discharge it, publicly, so that you can check.
Screening
Two-adult rule
Images and stories
Reporting a concern
“Educating all of our children must be one of our most urgent priorities.”
Now that you know who we are.
The next question is whether the work is worth funding. That page is next door, with our numbers and where they come from.