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MANDY PEARSON, FOUNDER AND CEO OF THE BHAMBAYI PROJECT, SHARES HER STORY FOR IGNITING HOPE AND CHANGING THE WORLD FOR GOOD

husband in 1999. I joined BoE Corporate, then a merger with Nedcor meant a move to Joburg, but being pregnant I decided to leave and consult in the IT and financial services space – at that time a space quite rare to women.

My second daughter was very ill for her first two years, so I decided to have a break from consulting and started studying theology. In February 2007, Sizakele, my housekeeper, told me how flash floods had ravaged a community called Bhambayi and brought me Lillian Mokoatle’s number, a phenomenal community leader in the area. The Bhambayi Project was born and over the years Lillian and I have shared many deep discussions, laughs and tears.

For the first 10 years, the Bhambayi Project was focused on building relationships, with leadership combining the two communities. Together we looked to transform the lives of orphans and vulnerable children, but our goal was that everyone’s lives would be transformed. We were aware that most people in Durban North – wonderful and generous though they were – had racial bias without even realising it. Each orphan was linked with a sponsor who would journey with them. From the beginning we emphasised a focus on transformative relationships, rather than handouts.

In 2011, a year after my third daughter was born, I was asked to lead St Margaret’s Church, and in 2017 to support Kevin Robertson in leading St Martin’s Church. At the end of 2019 the Bhambayi Project was growing significantly, and I decided to leave full-time church work and focus my energies on Bhambayi fulltime. God’s timing with Covid starting two months later.

How the Bhambayi Project operates has always been more important to us than what we do. We developed the term “eye2eye” for our relationship focus that is inherent in everything we do. People often view poverty as merely lack, but it is even more about feeling less than and having no voice. Eye2eye means we are all equals and we give to each other in different ways, not necessarily material, but just as valuable. In our We Have A Dream poem which I wrote many years ago, one verse explains the eye2eye giving approach: We have a dream of honour, where no one is seen as less than. Where there is no giver or receiver. But all give and receive » and are blessed. This message has spread through our Mandela Day campaigns since 2020 which have been adopted by over 20 schools and many organisations and businesses – where the focus is not so much on doing something for 67 minutes, but reflecting through thought-provoking videos on a different way of being in the world – a way that gives dignity rather than dependency. This has grown to workshops and story-telling evenings in various spaces around our H.O.P.E. Building Model, which encapsulates a way of giving we believe is crucial to building the future of our country.

Today we have over 237 children involved in our daily programmes, as well as their guardians and many unemployed school leavers. Our focus is not just to enable our children to thrive, but to be agents of change in the world. During the 2022 KZN floods, when hope was at an all-time low, Andrew Sutton and Sandy B volunteered to help the Bhambayi flood victims. This led to a song being written for our children to give a message of hope to KZN. Three months later Woza Join Us was released by the Bhambayi Project, written by Andrew Sutton and involving a collaboration of South African artists – including Skye Wanda, Thee Legacy and Kyle Deutsch – together with some of our orphans and vulnerable children. The message of the song is that it doesn’t matter how little you have or how young you are, you can ignite hope, you can change the world for good.

The song opened doors on TV and radio, and less than a month later when we were faced with a horrendous child rape case, we were able to be a voice for the voiceless. Since then we’ve had a number of rape cases of young girls and boys under 10 years old and are appalled that so many violent rapists are being let out on R1 500 bail. The implications on the children and their families are massive, to say nothing of future victims. We will continue to fight for justice, not only for the children in Bhambayi, but across South Africa.

Recently I was showing a visitor around the Bhambayi Project. Inside our play therapy room were three children sprawled on the floor, laughing together. One was a little boy of six who we’d found on the streets a few weeks earlier, and who’d never been in school due to neglect. Now attending school, there were two of our Grade 3 children teaching this little boy the alphabet – and having a ball!

In our hall we found four boys hunched around a table. One of them we had connected with the day before, and again he had never been to school a day in his life. This was just one of the 37 children we’ve come across this year who have never been to school. Again, the other boys had been teaching him the alphabet.

I felt pretty choked up as Sma, our social worker, told our visitor: “You see, this is the Bhambayi Project in action! It’s all about eye2eye. You don’t receive and receive, you receive so you can give to others. We are all on the same level. We teach each of our children to play their part in changing the world for good!”

For me, that story captures the Bhambayi Project’s mission of re-storying the lives of orphans and vulnerable children through eye2eye relationships and empowerment, enabling them to be agents of change in the world.

Lives still being re-storied, re-storying other lives. Now therein lies the power to change South Africa for good. And perhaps that one experience in a corner cafe in 1981 was part of that process, as my life began to be re-storied, enabling me to restory the lives of others.

I believe that eye2eye empowerment –giving dignity to the materially poor and enabling them to be agents of change in the world – can change the trajectory of our nation. This is not about charity. It is a model that goes beyond education and social grants to enable psycho-social and economic thriving in the richness of diverse community. It is a necessity. *