Members of the Bryanston Bible Church in Gauteng spent the weekend at Thembalethu HBC building two houses for needy people of the Nkomazi community. This initiative is part of the Church’s Missions Outreach ministry, and to date the congregation has replaced 10 shack dwellings with cement brick houses and garden latrines known as “long drops”. Most of these houses are occupied by surrogate grandmothers (“Gogos”) who take care of the orphaned and vulnerable children within the community.

The Nkomazi Community Trust is promoting this community house-building project as an effective method of developing and managing team dynamics within a business while making a real and meaningful contribution to society. Discussions are currently underway with some of the Trust’s contributing partners to develop this into a unique corporate training programme which can be offered to businesses. The advantage of such an initiative is that in addition to its training benefits, businesses would be able to claim back their costs as contributions to Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) and as tax deductible donations.