Understanding the need:

Apartheid – Years of suffering forced by the ruling minority.  Political, economic, and brutal domination put the blacks and coloreds into racially segregated Townships – splitting up families and sending them into inhuman conditions.
It started with laws, but escalated quickly.  The first time metal bullets were used was against a school in Soweto (home to the Othandweni Orphanage) where the army slaughtered school children.  The gagged peace ended, and civil war broke out.
Twelve years ago Apartheid ended, and the majority obtained rule.
What now?
What would you do?
How do you rebuild a nation from debt and oppression?
With great foresight, ingenuity, and wisdom, South Africa chose to rebuild on a foundation of unwarranted forgiveness.  To keep vengeful, corrupt, whiplash politics from taking its toll, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (set up by Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu) was created where full amnesty and pardon was given to all Apartheid offenders at the price of the truth.
Even from such unfair beginnings, South Africa has become a thriving nation, but not without its own problems.
HIV/AIDS runs rampant throughout the country with 1 in 4 people having the immune deficiency disease.  This sounds bad, but our reaction would have been the same if I had said 1 in 10 or 1 in 20.  We can’t possibly understand the impact this has on a community.
Orphans roam the disease infested Townships.  Children only 14 years of age are too often forced to create vagabond families to care for younger children.  No child should have to bear that burden.
40% unemployment wages degenerative war on the minds and pocketbooks of the people.
Stigma and cultural barriers keep foreign aid and volunteering immorally silent.
Economic benefits elsewhere draw qualified South Africans away from their country’s need in an understood though problematic “brain drain.”
Public health facilities are under funded and overcrowded to handle the growing epidemic, while general health care remains a critical issue.
Malnutrition and disease cured by simple home remedies kill thousands.  This cannot happen.
Complex misconceptions of HIV/AIDS lead to inappropriate management and treatment of the disease, helping to spread both the disease and misleading information.
All this in a continent perceived as dangerous and barbaric.
We have to help.
But, where do we start?
It’s education.  It’s housing.  It’s medicinal.  It’s political.  It’s a lack of jobs.  It’s a lack of understanding.
It’s overwhelming… and it’s our mission.
Not our job as foreigners or superpowers, but together with South Africans, it’s our job as the human race to prevent preventable deaths.
We must raise the quality of life for the afflicted, and it starts small.
It can start with a foundation, it can start with a nation, but is should start with YOU.

Find out how you can get involved.

• Robben Island Memorial