ChildFind

By the time we launched the ChildFind project we had many thousands of supporters and friends across the country and internationally. The main purpose of ChildFind was to pressure Government and the Courts into action. They had been stalling for years even though THE HOUSE put constant pressure on them, even though we solicited international Govt assistance to help apply more pressure. Well, to be fair, they had a lot on their mind - Mandela and De Klerk shared a Nobel peace prize for the way they facilitated the change to democracy, a move they had been working on for almost a decade, but you know...we just could not wait anymore for their games to come to an end because thousands of people were dying on the streets in senseless violence from greed and shameless neglect of duty to protect the weak.

We had to push harder to be heard. Yes, true...in the end we pushed so hard that Pres. Mbeki threatened us with militancy so we had to step back - but the ChildFind network of people, the barrage of letters to Parliament and Courts eventually won the day and in 1996 we got what we had been fighting for - the LEGAL right to have a shelter, a residential care center, for destitute homeless girl children. No more did the girls have to live with pimps while their homeless brothers could live in male child shelters. No more threats from the police and welfare that they will close us down - after 6 years we were legal. Overnight, literally, thousands of shelters for girls started up all over the country. It seemed as if every church, and every other organization, even Oprah, suddenly took an interest. What a wonderful powerful tool that was. 2 years after it started it was redundant because it succeeded in int mission. We learned not to underestimate the power of passion.