The Lily of the Valley Children’s Village was established in 1993 primarily as a hospice to care for HIV/Aids infected orphans until such time as they died. At that time life expectancy was little more than seven years.By the year 2000, with love, good nutritious food, improving health-care, and increasingly professional attention to the needs of the orphans, our children were living much longer than originally anticipated. The improvement has been such that the more than 140 orphans under our care in our residential villages can expect to live normal lives, given the efficacy of the current ARV regime.

In 2002 it became increasingly obvious that: our children needed to have greater involvement in normal community life and we needed to extend our programmes to include children and families in need from the community, being the salt and light of the Gospel to them.

A 200 acre property was then purchased and more than R4 million invested in a medical clinic, a computer school, a sewing facility, a bakery, vegetable growing tunnels, farming operations, a day care centre for pre-schoolers, a school, sports fields, a building for sports equipment and change rooms with showers, an amphitheatre for cultural and educational events, a community hall, and housing accommodation for staff, volunteers and visitors.

The Lily Medical Centre (Clinic) offers our doctor’s services to the community 4 days each week and also boasts a fully equipped dental surgery and well stocked pharmacy. Through the network of volunteer home-based care workers, loving palliative care is offered to people suffering with HIV/Aids in the community. Every month over 50 000 meals are distributed to households in Mophela, Sankontshe, Mpumalanga, Embo and Mid-Illovo.

Each day, Ekujabuleni Day Care cares for 180 children (many of them from child-headed households). The vegetable tunnels produce an average of 750kg of tomatoes each week – this is the income generating arm of the work, bringing in funds to help the work become sustainable. All of this carries on in the context of our mission to produce sustainable Christ-like leaders for a healthy community.

Thus we have progressed from a hospice to an orphanage, from an orphanage to a children’s village, from one children’s village to three, from three children’s villages to a significant community development organisation catering for entire communities. In partnership with the Departments of Welfare and also Health, we have service level agreements to provide food, health, education, HIV/Aids counselling and training, in three rural constituencies.

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