Care Village Outreach’s mission for the past 9 years has been to support the children of Care Village in South Africa. Thank you for your ongoing support! Please keep reading to learn about our latest initiatives and how you can continue to help. It has been a while since our last newsletter. While we have been keeping busy supporting children in South Africa, our direction and focus have changed. We have started a new project that we believe is already making a difference in the lives of former Care Village children. As we navigated this transition, it became clear that our mission needed to evolve in order to continue making a positive impact. We began reevaluating our approach and sought input from both the community and the young adults who were once under Care Village’s guidance. This collaborative process helped us identify new ways to support their growth and well-being, focusing on life skills, mentorship, and emotional resilience.
In August of 2024, the Care Village asked our organization, Care Village Outreach to stop supporting the children in the ways we had been doing since 2017. We understood them to say that our priorities were different than what they needed for the children. Although we had continued to try and support physical projects on site, we were looking beyond the day-to-day physical needs of the Care Village and trying to support them in terms of psychological and emotional needs of the children.
In February of 2024, the leadership team at the Care Village determined that our efforts to support the emotional well-being of the children was interfering with the day-to-day management of the children. They requested we limit our focus to Care Village’s finances. Over the last 9 years, we have developed strong ties with many of the children and the children drive our mission. We concluded that a monetary-only focus was not a good use of our skill sets. If we were going to make a difference in the lives of these children, it should continue to be on a developmental level where we could help them better transition back into society after their time at the Care Village came to an end.
Not so coincidentally, children who had left the Care Village started reaching out. Some had no place to land and no life skills. Others were returned to families in poverty with no way of completing their education. The common denominator appeared to be that many of these children, who were now adults, were destined to languish in a country where they had little hope for a future.
As a result, we began helping some of these young adults to get a leg up. We decided to start a “halfway house” to provide an opportunity for some to pool what little resources they had and to create a cooperative living environment for them. In October of 2025, we were able to find a property to lease that would accommodate 8 people. In December, two of our board members visited the house we are calling Transition Village to assist in supplying the house with furnishings and helping these children adapt to a cooperative living environment.
The journey has been tedious with some hiccups, but we are happy to report that we believe this concept is working. Four of the children have full-time jobs, two are continuing their education, one is working part-time until he can find permanent work or a placement in a technical school, and one who has recently arrived is actively looking for employment. All of the children are beyond grateful for this opportunity. This gives us enthusiasm to to expand our involvement and impact. In addition to paying the monthly rent, Care Village Outreach is subsidizing food and incidental expenses such as school uniforms, transportation to work and school, among others. The children are pooling resources to pay utilities and personal care items.
As our lease (and our funds) will end in October, we are announcing a fundraising campaign to purchase a permanent home that will permit Transition Village to impact more lives and to live on in perpetuity. The goal is to establish a fully functioning, independent cooperative living situation for up to fifteen people.
Our goal is to raise $100,000 to purchase a property, possibly a vehicle, and to be able to subsidize some expenses until Transition Village is fully self-supporting. In the coming days, you will see photos and videos from the December trip, showing how Transition Village has begun to evolve. All eight of the children have written or made video testimonials explaining why this initiative is so valuable to them and to their futures. Before the campaign closes, we hope that you will be able to understand how much of an impact Transition Village will have on these young adults as they move through our facility and on to independent, productive lives. We ask for your financial support and your prayers as we strive to assist these amazing young people.
Board of Directors
Care Village Outreach