JV against the odds, lives up to his coming of age Xhosa name “Jongiveli”, meaning taking care of the youth. Between 2014 and 2018 he was part of every Sihamba Sonke pilot joining us on the journey to raise local mentors to help fill the gap of a fatherless generation in our community.

Through the Sihamba Sonke Chess and Sport school programmes, JV weekly engages with 100 students on average. Many of these students just started coming to JV’s home over the weekend, desperate for mentoring relationships where they feel safe, inspired and can be invested in. Consequently, JV started an informal youth group, with the aim that every child in the community have an inspiring safe place where they can go to in need.

The Sihamba Sonke character development programme, was a big turning point in  the impact of JV’s life, where he completed the Jump Start programme and the year long, “The World Needs a Father” course, focused on the holistic impact of a father in each area of a child’s life. JV, took the lessons learned to heart to tangibly impact his own children and started the journey to be a father to them in a holistic way. By modelling what it means to be a practical involved, loving father taking holistic responsibility for your children is key to create an avalanche of community transformation, where strong family structures is the foundation of any society, currently the exception in our community. (see stats on ‘About Us’ Page)

Following in the footsteps of JV, the other local mentors in Sihamba Sonke have a similar impact, where together we on a journey to raise up value driven, purposeful leaders driving community transformation through establishing a mentorship culture between the young and old.