BACKGROUND OF TSWANE HOME OF HOPE where Trail of Hope Foundation is hosting Holiday for Hope event on the 19th of Dec 2009.

BACKGROUND OF TSWANE HOME OF HOPE where Trail of Hope Foundation is hosting Holiday for Hope event on the 19th of Dec 2009.


Living and working on the streets of Sunnyside,Pretoria young girls are at the mercy of pimps and predators out to exploit them. Under cover of darkness, they prostitute themselves, surviving from one pick-up to the next and one substance fix to another. They have no hope of a different future.

Without homes, parents, mentors or education, these damaged lives have experienced only abuse, squalor, depravity and deprivation, hunger and hopelessness. Some of the girls have been abused, others are orphaned, but all deserve a better quality of life.

Tshwane Home of Hope offers a refuge from prostitution, a safe haven of love, care and hope for girls in crisis. Through love and care, we rekindle the spark of hope in their lives. We value them, and teach them the value of belonging. We re-introduce them to the education system, securing places for them at local schools. We mentor and support them, encouraging them to learn successfully. We wean them off the streets and teach them simple skills to earn an income from other methods.

We give these children hope.
We hope you will too!

With your support, we can repair broken lives, offering young girls hope for the future.

We need presents ,we need volunteers.

Get in touch

Tendai Sean Joe
+27 971 5992
tendaijoe@gmail.com

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Abusers don’t discriminate against colour, creed or age. Child Abuse is rife in our country and unfortunately not nearly enough is being done to protect the future of our country, the children. Government is shirking their responsibility when it comes to providing for destitute families therefore making it increasingly difficult for the poorest of the poor to survive. Abuse & Poverty are the main contributing factors to street children and abandoned baby statistics in our country.

One of the resultant problems is Abandoned Babies. They are found in plastic bags, boxes, parks, public toilets, dustbins and sometimes just left on the side of the road. These babies are helpless little victims, innocent bystanders who did not ask to be subjected to the hardships they face, and this is where Tswane Home of Hope ,together with New BeginningZ would like to make a difference. The babies who are found alive are the lucky ones, but what about those babies who have had their lives stolen away from them by being suffocated in a plastic bag or frozen to death in a dustbin. And in our community this is unfortunately the harsh reality we are faced with far too many times as we come across dead babies.

It doesn’t have to end like this for all of them though. What if we could provide some alternative solution for these desperate mothers? A safe place where they can leave their babies safely and anonymously. A place like the “New BeginningZ Baby Door”.

Some might ask: But how can mothers abandon their babies? The answer is not an easy one, but from our previous work experience we have realised that these mothers sometimes feel they have no other options. Sometimes, the girls who are involved in Commercial Sex Exploitation have their newborn babies taken away and dumped by their Pimps in order for the girls to continue work almost immediately. Others are young teenage girls who are fearful of what their families might say and do to them and there are those who have been raped or part of an incestuous relationship and cannot begin to imagine how they are going to cope with a little child conceived in violence.
Tswane Home of Hope shelter in particular was the project where the “The New BeginningZ Baby Door” was installed. What is the “Baby Door” you might ask? Well, basically it is a square gap or hole in a wall with a hatch where desperate mothers can safely leave their unwanted babies. The person would lift the hatch and place the baby in the receiving bassinet which will press down on the hidden silent alarm button located directly beneath it. Although the person dropping the baby will not be able to hear the alarm, it will sound in the housemother’s room to alert her that there is a baby. She will immediately go and fetch the baby from the hatch regardless of time of day or night. We foresee that most will utilize the “Baby Door” at night.


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PS STATISTICS :According to the Network Against Child Labour, more than 40 000 children under the age of 18 in South Africa are involved in child prostitution as a means to survive.
Many children find themselves without homes as a result of poverty, neglect or abuse. Surviving on the streets, they are vulnerable to the booming sex trade and human trafficking.

Trail of Hope-Zimbabwe visit

From the 13th to the 16th of August i visited Zimbabwe's capital city Harare together with a friend.The mission was to carry out an execise like we will be doing on the Trail of Hope and our chosen homes were Chinyaradzo and Upenyu Utsva Children Homes.All of them are situated in Highfields an old township west of the Capital City.

Well interesting is the fact that visited Upenyu Utsva just by accident in 2001 when i was in a UNICEF program that took us to Masiye Camp in Bulawayo and due to the death of one of the Ministers ,our trip was postponed by a day and we ended up sleeping at Upenyu Utsva,whoever might have had made that decision helped me to have a clear understanding of life in a children's home.Honestly i diod not sleep for the whole night as i heard one story after another of how the boys had ended up at the home.Another interestig fact is the Home[Upenyu Utsva] used to be a juvenile prison,but was later converted into an ophanage.However the tag seem to still remain upto this day ,as most of the infrastructure still in use dates back to 1962 when the institution was established.

But on my mission i needed to know more than just the priosn history.I wanted to know how the boys have been coping,i wanted to eat what they are eating and play with them all the games they play as well as watch with them the TV programmes they watch.How life is like at Upenyu Utsva,but most importantly dep down i knew i was going to adopt the home.So much may be written but the truth is,there is one man at the home ,who is referred to as father by the children,he told me something that will forever guide me in all that i do.He has been working with the institution since 1972 yes thats it 1972,since it was a juvenile institution then into transition to an ophanage.He knows no high living,but to me he said what matters to him are the children.He works for US$100 per month,but still he is there for the children when they need him.When we arrived at the ophanage he was coming from the Garden ,a self sustaining project that has helped the ophanage to weather the harsh economic climate that gripped the tiny beautiful country before the GNU government was formed.

I then had to visit where the boys sleep,as well as their toilets and bathrooms.If i say more i would be unfair,what i observed can be put into three simple words THEY NEED HELP.

Firstly the beds,blankets as well as their clothing are just but too old.Most of them were walking bare footed but what worried me was when we went to visit the bathrooms and toilets.THe facilities are rasty and old,with dirty water on the floor but still the children walk in and out of there with bare feet!I know its hard to do everything for them but something must be done to help them.I also wonder how many charities are in as much need as this particular one we visited?