Our story
Okay, but how did this all really come about?
Well, it’s difficult to put an exact date on these things.
Somewhere around 2019, just after COVID… yes, that one.
We started creating a few conversation spaces for teenagers who had lost some of the joy and hope of life. Many were carrying fear, anxiety and some pretty heavy stuff. It wasn’t a grand plan. There was no five-year strategy. No beautifully designed organisational chart. We just thought, maybe people need somewhere to talk.
Those spaces soon turned into pop-up hangouts. Places where teenagers could simply come, make friends again, laugh a bit, and rediscover what it felt like to belong somewhere.
And then, as tends to happen when you actually spend time with people, we started hearing their stories. We began to notice just how differently the road ahead could look for two young people of exactly the same age, simply because they had been born into very different circumstances.
There wasn’t really a single moment when Feet of Hope began. But there was one night that changed something for us.
We were doing late-night lifts, dropping a few youngsters home in the inner city. One of them jumped out and ran up the stairs of his block of flats. And there, lying across those same stairs, were two junkies completely out of it on heroin.
As we watched this youngster disappear up the stairs, one thought hit us:
How does this kid not become the person lying on the stairs?
Obviously, life is more complicated than that. People are not simply the sum of their circumstances. But the question stayed with us. And as we mulled it over, a second simple reality hit us.
If we don’t do something, who will?
So we started looking for ways to change the trajectory. We found funding to get a handful of young people into tertiary education, basically, just as many as we could afford. Which, at the beginning, was not a particularly impressive number. But it was a start. And ‘starts’ are beautiful things, because you never quite know where they may end.
But we soon discovered that getting someone into university is one thing. Helping them succeed there is another.
They needed more than fees.
- They needed a safe place to live.
- They needed mentors.
- They needed people who would notice when things were going badly.
- They needed community.
So then the student house was born.
And along with it came mentoring, leadership development, volunteering, work opportunities and the idea that receiving should eventually become giving. That if someone was given an opportunity, they could one day help create one for somebody else.
More than anything, though, we tried to build a family. And, as families tend to do, ours grew. The students grew. The team grew. The partnerships grew. And eventually those partnerships took us further afield, into rural communities in the Transkei.
Mbotyi, Transkei
There we became involved with an Early Childhood Development centre. One thing led to another, and eventually the ECD became part of the Feet of Hope family.
That little ECD has since become something much bigger: a picture of what can happen when you invest early, and a model we now hope to replicate in other communities.
Inside the Mbotyi ECD
So perhaps the easiest way to explain Feet of Hope today is this
We invest in people at the beginning of their story, and we walk with them as they grow.
- Sometimes that means a classroom for a three-year-old.
- Sometimes it means a bursary for an eighteen-year-old.
- Sometimes it means a home, a mentor, a meal, a connection, a job opportunity or simply someone saying, “I believe there is more ahead for you.”
Our partners
And lastly, there’s you.
The many, many people who contribute to Feet of Hope in all sorts of different ways. Through finances, volunteering, prayer, introductions, skills, encouragement, and sometimes simply by showing up.
There are those who give generously, those who give their time, and those who quietly pray for what we’re doing. There are people working stressful 9-to-5s for companies they may barely realise are helping make all of this possible. There are people who connect us to people, open doors, send a message, make a call, or simply say, “How can I help?”
Feet of Hope has never been the work of a few people. It’s been built by a whole lot of people doing a whole lot of little things, often without seeing the full picture.
So yes, this bit is about you. Thank you for being part of the story.
Become part of the story