‘Knowledge is power – never give up on an opportunity to learn’

As of October 2023, Statistics SA reported that 18.2 million individuals in the nation are living in extreme poverty.

However, there is always hope and Susan (Mama Zakhe) Ramekwa, who considers herself a caring, committed and responsible corporate citizen, has started the Tshepang Programme for Orphaned and Vulnerable Children, in a bid to fight poverty, keep children safe, help a community and improve lives.

In 2006, Mama Zakhe left her job as assistant director of the Johannesburg Child Welfare to start her own charity centre. The social work exposure slowly and gently built an interest and developed into a passion that she had to put into practice and treat as a daily job.

Initially, Mama Zakhe wanted to start this programme in her hometown of Dobsonville, but she noticed that there is a need at the grassroots level for a daycare facility that offers daily meals, health and hygiene monitoring, counselling, life skills support, and suitable education in the community of Princess.

“This has always been in my mind, but I tried to be ignorant towards it. When I moved to Roodepoort and walked the streets of Princess and other neighbourhoods, I realised that I need to do something to stabilise poverty faced by these communities,” says Mama Zakhe.

This centre helps the community in terms of food supply and creates jobs. Mama Zakhe cares for 320 children daily and has a feeding scheme for more than 105 adults and seniors. She is assisted by 23 full-time caregivers and tends to child-headed households in the nearby informal settlement.

Many companies were negatively affected by Covid-19, with orphanage centres and old age homes hit the hardest. This disadvantaged many orphanage centres or programmes from receiving funds. Despite all these events, she never let her dream of saving the world vanish.

Mama Zakhe was awarded the Clover Mama Afrika Business Woman of the Year Award in 2013. The centre also started a partnership with Simunye Projects, which assisted the centre in continuing to do great work in the community.

“We started Simunye so that privileged children can see how they can make a difference, and we partnered with Tshepang because they are doing great work. We can show these children that they can make a difference too,” says co-founder of Simunye Projects, Samantha Dry.

The centre continued to contribute to the community of Princess with the help of sponsors from local to international levels. Mama Zakhe recently started a baking training programme where she will be teaching community members how to prepare freshly baked bread.

Mama Zakhe never doubted the route she had taken, and with the organisation’s initial vision, she had to prioritise the centre by self-funding it until it was financially stable and received sponsorship from different agencies. Now her main mission is to create more employment opportunities for individuals who would love to restore the concept of Ubuntu and bring change to the community.