At Help One Now, we value relationship, transparency, integrity and partnership. We know that our most valuable assets are our local leaders…and high-capacity local leaders can be hard to come by. So when trusted friends tell us about good leaders doing incredible work, we listen…but we listen slowly. Our friend Lisa-Jo Baker has been encouraging us to visit Pretoria and see the work of Take Action for the last few years.

We partnered with Lisa-Jo over the past year on some fundraising projects (though she and her readers did all of the work) that resulted in a clean water point, a community center and vegetable garden, a playground, and staggering progress for the Maubane community. And then, we finally got the chance to visit South Africa and the Take Action leaders last fall. We were thoroughly impressed, and inspired to begin an official partnership.

We are partnering with Take Action Ministries in Pretoria, ZA to empower and resource key community leaders as they care for orphans and vulnerable children.

We will focus on holistic community development to keep vulnerable kids WITH their families and help transform the community. Essentially, it’s orphan prevention! By addressing desperate social needs such as education, nutrition, health care, social awareness, leadership training, and economic development, we can ensure that families have a chance to stay together. They won’t have to make the impossible and unjust decision of which children they can afford to keep. And in time, as health and education permeate this younger generation, change and progress will come from within rather than without.

Under the local leadership that Take Action has established, and with the help of the Help One Now vulnerable child sponsorship program, we believe that these families can break the cycle of extreme poverty.