Clover Mama Afrika is the epitome of strong womanhood, and as usual one of their many Mama Afrikas is showing what it means to care selflessly for those around her while leveraging their skills to build their projects.
Mama Phomolo has been working side-by-side with her mother Mama Florence Nyakiso when she started Self-Help Project in 1995 and then later joined her mother working at the centre. She is no stranger to the values of Clover Mama Afrika and has dedicated her life to helping others along with her mother. Mama Florence retired in January 2018, and Mama Phomolo was the natural choice for her successor.
Mama Phomolo provides care, love and nutrition to more than 250 children, who have nowhere else to go during the day. She has taken over the 11 different self-help projects with enthusiasm. Mama Phomolo has been a Clover Mama Afrika skills training beneficiary for a number of years and is well-equipped to provide skills training for the various projects. She is committed to helping others overcome their challenges and has dedicated her life to achieve this goal.
Mama Phomolo Raisa from Botshabelo is one of the Mama Afrikas who runs her own egg-laying project at her centre in order to have more food for her community. She recently received more than 100 new healthy egg-laying hens. Her mother, Mama Florence, helps to look after the new feathered friends, making sure there’s enough food and water and that the hens are calm so they lay more eggs.
But that’s not where Mama Phomolo’s farming endeavours end. This Mama recently received 10 piglets which she can’t stop bragging about, including how this gift will keep on giving to those around her too. Apart from her egg-laying hens and her pigs, she also has beautiful organic gardens, and cattle on her farm.
Where many people are only able to dream of a vegetable garden, Mama Phomolo has a thriving vegetable garden that provides fresh vegetables for the lunches of all the children at her centre right through the year. After recent rains, it was time to pull out weeds that didn’t belong in between the veggies. She and her workers worked in the garden and there was only one thing on their minds: to clean every inch of the garden to allow it to grow even more.
Mama Phomolo has also been busy teaching her niece how to do mosaic. Dieketseng Raisa is 13 years old and in Grade 9, and did her first piece of mosaic under the watchful eye of her aunt.
“Mama Phomolo Raisa has been with the Clover Mama Afrika project for many years now and is a hard-working, passionate Mama Afrika. It is so uplifting to see a Clover Mama Afrika teaching another member of the community or a family member a new skill that she has learned through the project. Mama Phomolo doesn’t let anything stand in her way from making her centre a success and I am so proud of her and all she has achieved and is doing for those around her, ” explains Prof Elain Vlok, Clover Manager, Clover Mama Afrika Trust.
Clover Mama Afrika is a sustainable Corporate Social Investment project that has been in existence since 2001, seeing the project host 440 training sessions with over 2313 beneficiaries over the years.
