As a small charity, we do not have the ability to fund big projects.  We therefore identify smaller, affordable projects where our contribution can make a real difference and where every penny of the money raised from sales and from donations can be used in the best possible way.  Thanks to the relationships we have built up over our years of visiting Manzini, we are able to find out from those working directly with children and young people what we can do to help. 

When the trustees visit Manzini, they always take out as much luggage as possible, filled with donations for the local community. Our bags are filled with a wide range of items, and recently we took the followng with us:

• Baby clothes and blankets knitted and donated by family and friends: these are shared between the maternity hospital in Manzini and families in the townships

• Glasses: reading glasses are donated to the eye clinic in Manzini who also welcome donations of unwanted prescription glasses as the frames and parts can be reused and recyled with new lenses.

• Bras: donated to women in the local community. Good quality underwear is unaffordable for many girls and women

• Clothes for children, young people, men and women: the clothes are donated to projects run by MYC and to the poorest communities

And anything else we can carry! Thank you to everyone who supports us with their donations. Every single item makes a difference to somebody. 

You can find out more about some of our work below or contact us at Manzini2985@gmail.com

Our projects

Enjabulweni

Enjabulweni is a residential home in Manzini which cares for up to 25 boys. It is run by Manzini Youth Care in Manzini, and provides a safe place to live for boys who have no family, or whose family cannot support them. The organisation also ensures the boys can complete their education. Secondary education in Eswatini is all fee-paying, so the Salesian order pays the boys’ school fees and provides their uniforms.

In recent years, Enjabulweni has undergone extensive refurbishment, creating a secure environment for those who live there. The boys are cared for by Loma, the house mother, Douglas the house father, and Simphiwe, a social worker also lives on site to support them. Each boy has his own sleeping cubicle and there is a communal dining room. The team ensures that each boy can attend school and they have a light and spacious study area. A new kitchen and shower block completed the work. Our contributions help provide the things that make Enjabulweni a home for the boys. .

During our visits we liaise with the social worker to find out what the boys need and purchase items in the local community. They usually need toiletries, socks, underwear, warm clothes, indoor shoes, games and always footballs and we did lots of shopping to purchase all these again during our visit in 2026. This year, the boys also needed new school shoes, trousers and school bags so all these were purchased too. Following our visit, Simphiwe also got new school shirts and T shirts for all the boys. With the support of everyone at Enjabulweni, we gave the boys’ cubicles a bit of a makeover. Over the course of about 10 days, we made 24 new curtains which close off the boys’ private space and put up new rails making them easier to open and close.

Out visit in 2026 coincided with the World Cup and the boys were excited to have lots of football to watch. We purchased a new TV for them in 2025 but the decoder which is needed to get the sports channels had been damaged in a storm, so we replaced it. The boys love football. They play outside all the time at Enjabulweni at the weekends and evenings, and at school, if they have football boots. No football boots also rules them out of playing other local teams. We could see how much it would mean to the boys to be able to play, so we decided to buy each of them a pair of football boots. Having the kit opens up many opportunities for the boys to be part of something, to build friendships, develop skills and simply enjoy life. This was probably one of the best decisions we have ever made; the boys’ reaction to getting football boots was one of pure joy.

During our visit in 2026, we were very happy to meet four boys who are hoping to go to university, and we support them by paying for their application process. We have done this for some time now, and it’s always great to hear about their successes. Two boys are still studying, one in Frankfurt. When he completes his studies in Germany, he is applying for universities in the USA, and we will support these applications too. One young man is about to complete a degree in primary teaching and another has graduated with a degree in Business Administration. We know too that many of the boys who have left Enjabulweni are in employment, with good jobs. Without the support they get at Enjabulweni, they would not be able to complete their education and find work.

Enjabulweni is the boys' home and it really matters that they can have the ordinary things that any children might want – a TV, football boots, a private space they can call their own. This makes a difference to the quality of their lives in Enjabulweni and our small contribution can have a big impact.

The community and pre-school at Eticancweni

We first visited Eticancweni in March 2024. This community has a pre-school and kitchen which are both supported by our colleagues in Manzini. The pre-school provides free early years provision and the kitchen provides the children, and the wider community with a meal.  We could see that water was a priority. The only source of water is the river, and getting water up to the community involved hard manual labour. The pre-school and kitchen are even further from the river so getting water there was very difficult.  During our visit in March 2024, we were delighted to provide a diesel pump, pipes and a tank which would enable the community to pump water from the river to the tanks by their homes. This gives better access to water for drinking and washing and the community can also irrigate the gardens where they grow food for themselves and the neighbouring care point and pre-school. Getting water to the pre-school and kitchen was still a problem – more on that later.

In 2025, we concentrated our work in the pre-school. About twenty four children attend and they are in the care of two wonderful teachers. In June 2025, we worked with them to purchase materials they thought essential to help promote children's learning and development.  The teachers bought a wide range of books, stationery, art materials, resources for role play, games and puzzles and a teaching clock. We had brought a parachute with us, and the teachers were delighted with this as they had not used one before. Everyone had great fun learning how to use it. 

One of the teachers told us she really wanted somewhere comfortable where the children could sit for stories so while we were in Manzini, two of the trustees made floor cushions with materials purchased locally. The pre-school only has very small windows high up in the walls and it can be very dark.  To address this issue, we purchased solar lights which can be moved around to bring light to the dark corners. The dark green paint added to the feeling of darkness, so we also bought white paint, and the community repainted the classroom.

The main focus, though, for 2026 was the outside play area, which was in a poor statewhen we visited. There were solid frames for swings, but no swings, and other equipment was in bad condition. The fence was broken which means chickens and goats can get into the area where the children play. One of the biggest concerns is lack of water. There was no running water, so there's no water for drinking, washing or flushing the toilets, and as noted above, all the water has to be manually moved from the river, about a 25 minute walk away. We did discover, though, that water has been connected in the past, but the pre-school was registered as a business and the high charges for this classification could not be met. The bills went unpaid and the water was cut off.

Work on improving the outdoor play area and getting water reconnected could not be completed during our two week visit in June 2026- too much to do. We are extremely lucky, therefore, to have a friend and fixer in Manzini who is leading the work for us. He has worked with us for many years as a driver and a guide but since our return to Eswatini after COVID, he has become an active volunteer in our work. He has excellent relationships with the community at Eticancweni and is working with them to carry out the repairs. By late July 2026, Sandile had worked with the community leaders to get the water meter reconnected so the pre-school and the kitchen now have clean running water on site. The refurbishment of the play equipment is almost complete and work has started on repairs to the fence and. Sandile has also put shelves up in the pre-school so the teachers have some proper storage. Other plans for the future include setting up a system to capture rainwater to flush the toilets and planting fruit trees. We are extremely grateful to Sandile, our volunteer on the ground; without him, we could not achieve half as much as we did in 2026.

Supporting girls in the community

Resuable sanitary towels

Support for Phumelela Project

Phumelela Project is a charity based in Manzini which offers inclusive mental health programmes tackling gender based violence, suicide, addiction, and youth rehabilitation. The vision of the charity is very much in harmony with our aims and purposes and we are pleased to support their work which helps so many young people.

Much of their work takes place in the area around Manzini and safe transport for the staff is essential, so we made a donation to help our colleagues buy a reliable car. On a previous visit, we took several suits and smart trousers and jackets for Phumelela to lend to young men for interviews and other occasions. In March 2023 and 2024, we gave the staff a donation so that they could buy smart clothes for the young women they support too.

In 2025, we made a donation to support Phumelela’s new community centre and soup kitchen in a rural area called Nyakeni. We were thrilled to have the opportunity to visit Nyakeni in June 2026 to see what our donation had been used for. It enabled the staff to buy enough food supplies to keep the soup kitchen running for three full months, therapeutic toys for child counselling session and training resources on mental health for the Women's Committee. We also took two water filters with us when we visited which will help provide clean drinking water for another community which relies on a river.  Some packs of reusable sanitary towels welcomed by the Women’s Committee. They want to make these for their community, so we again provided some materials before we left.

On the day of our visit, many people from the self-help group and Women’s Committee were attending  trauma-informed care training, covering mental health, trauma responses, and Psychological First Aid. Phumelela is committed to supporting the many young people in Eswatini affected by substance abuse, gender based violence and poor mental health and it was a privilege to visit the facilities at Nyakeni.