Founder of WOW shines as a beacon of hope
Patricia has overcome financial woes and social ills, creating lemonade with every lemon that life has handed to her and further paid it forward by touching the lives of many in and around ward 68.
IT’S so easy to let life get you down when all the odds are stacked against you. But strong and inspirational individuals such as Patricia Dove, founder of Wentworth Organisation of Women (WOW), is a prime example of exuding strength in times of adversity and going through each day as a beam of hope in her community.
Coming from a large family of 12, and growing up in a poor background herself, Patricia found that it was easy for her to relate and identify with families in distress and in need of support. She took the bold decision to start her own organisation to assist many of those in need in Wentworth.
“I first started out helping children in the community by having an educational project for children under a tree at Woodville Road. Although I lacked resources I was very concerned about the children being raised in an area with so many social ills such as drug abuse and crime.
I had to do something to help salvage and nurture what I could of those children’s childhood experiences.
“I would go out into the community everyday and I would pick up the children in the neighbourhood and often find that many of them were left alone during the day to fend for themselves or staying with a mother who abused alcohol,” she shared.
Patricia’s hard work didn’t go unnoticed after she was discovered by a group of students from the University of KwaZulu-Natal in search of working on a worthy initiative. The students helped her formalise her initiative into something more concrete and she soon had a small wooden structure to work from.
“While working with children, some of the mothers would come and fetch their children and they would tell me their touching stories. From working with the children the initiative soon developed into a source for family support and resource centre, hence giving birth to WOW. At WOW we provide any and every kind of assistance that we can towards struggling families.”
Today WOW is run from a proper centre that was built on a plot of land that was paid for by the Japanese Embassy specifically for the purpose to assist the organisation with a proper facility to carry out its community driven mandate. There is also a local SASSA office, petitioned by Patricia and her team, as well as a fully-fledged Early Childhood Development (ECD) centre on the premises which was inspired by the educational under the tree project Patricia had been running in Woodville Road.
Patricia has overcome financial woes and social ills, creating lemonade with every lemon that life has handed to her and further paid it forward by touching the lives of many in and around ward 68. Her loving nature is infectious and she holds a rare quality to consistently speak and act from a place of honest gratitude and selflessness and regularly emit grace toward others.
WOW has won several awards from various institutions in recognition of its commendable efforts. Among the many projects run at WOW is: a weekly feeding scheme at the centre every Wednesday, assistance with a broad spectrum of family issues, municipal home applications, holiday programmes and community outreach programmes. The organisation will also be hosting a programme aimed at socially uplifting young girls for Mandela Day at the centre on 221 Austerville Drive.
“The work I do is most fulfilling and gives me an adrenaline rush. I always say to people that I didn’t go to university nor did I complete my Matric but my work is the university of life from which I have learnt and grown so much and even taught others key life lessons. The journey has been amazing and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”
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