Concept

Drawing on research gathered from SOS Kinderdorf (), The Rafiki (), and Houses of Hope International (), including on-site visits to programs that have been successfully implementing these methods, and after much discussion with social workers and other care providers in South Africa and the United States, Emoyeni Children’s Village has been envisioned as follows:

• Six boys and girls of various ages grow up as brothers and sisters in an Emoyeni family, with foreign or local missionary foster parents. (Unlike children in other village-style programs, Emoyeni children have both foster mothers and foster fathers.) Natural siblings stay together.

• Each Emoyeni family lives in its own house complete with kitchen, laundry facilities, living and dining rooms, bathrooms and private bedrooms.

• About 15 homes are grouped together as the Emoyeni Children’s Village, forming a community and providing extended family for the children. The village also shares a recreational facility, chapel, maintenance building and library / educational center.

• Children attend public schools, and are encouraged to integrate with the surrounding community as part of healthy, normal family life.

• Emoyeni families are autonomous, and decisions regarding issues such as diet, dress, recreational activities and choice of church remain up to the discretion of the parents. Guidelines issued by the mission board provide a basic framework of accountability, but the premise is that families must operate with true liberty in order to be natural and successful.

• House parents commit to a minimum 4-year term, and raise their own personal missionary support, subsidized in part by the mission itself. For the sake of permanency with the children, missionaries are recruited with an understanding that stable, long-term relationships are the desired goal.

• House parents, in addition to raising a family, may have other mission related responsibilities, for example administration and maintenance of the village, staffing the local clinic, instructing agricultural interns, managing the agricultural program, teaching, distributing food supplies and other relief, etc., depending on their field of expertise. Having jobs and interests outside of the home also promotes a more realistic environment for the children in their care.

The Emoyeni board of directors is proposing the construction of such a village in a rural area in Mpumalanga Province, South Africa. With the help of patrons, sponsors and their grants, and the collaboration of the local welfare officials, it is our hope that the village could be fully operational and at capacity within 5 years.