Why Women Can Save Our World

I know most of us already know that women are fantastic human beings. They are the hope for saving our planet.

Home from Home is a cluster foster care organization. This essentially means that we oversee the running of 36 of foster homes that we have established in 16 communities across the Western Cape 16 years ago.

Each of these homes have up to six foster children placed in the care of a foster parent that we employ and provide support and oversight to. The children come from various backgrounds and cultures, with different levels of vulnerability. Imagine the challenge this creates.

Creating a loving family environment
Over and above this huge task of providing care 24/7, the key to the success of our model is that the foster parent must create ‘a loving family’ within this non-biologically linked group. The parent is expected to be able to unconditionally love all six children and establish an environment where all know they belong to a family with brothers and sisters.

This sense of belonging enables the children to rise above their previous vulnerabilities and take the opportunities offered to live positively in society.

This is no regular job where one can switch one’s commitment off at the end of the day or over weekends. Creating family is a full-time passion and mission. Our stringent screening process in looking for foster parents, requires us to select those people who are able to provide this level of love and commitment to children who are not biologically theirs.

A support team of incredible women
Our support team (social workers, tutors, therapists) also need to be directed to this key role of creating this second chance at family for our children.

To date, although we dearly value the five men who are employed by us (only one being in a foster caring role) the other 55 positions of employment are all held by women.

90% of our organization are women – phenomenal women!

Men certainly have their strengths too! However, I wish to highlight this unique strength in women, which often goes unrecognized. What an unbelievable skill to be able to successfully love and care for other people’s children and help heal the wounds of the past. It is a resource much like ‘ubuntu’ which is much more prevalent in women, and that we so dearly need more of in our country.

Why are we not more actively mining this gold to put to good use in our healing?

Let’s recognize this ‘gold’ within women and invite them to save our world.