Baby Hope House Journey

Several people have asked the question “Why the 2nd birthday when Hope House has been in operation for 9 years now?” Well, here is the explanation :

In 2007 Sonia Swinton and Lynne Pieterse accepted the first baby into their care through New Hope Ministry, which was a ministry of the Pinetown Presbyterian Church, counselling women with unplanned pregnancies. In 2008 both ladies registered as Foster Mothers and so the journey began.

At that time Sonia owned a nursery school which she ran from her home. Lynne was working in the corporate world. For four years these two ladies cared for only one or two babies at a time. Then, in 2011, Sonia closed her school for economic reasons and at the end of that year Lynne resigned her job. Both women then went into fostering full-time. In June 2012 an article was published in a local newspaper about Hope House and the work being done there. This put Hope House ‘on the map’ so to speak. A committee was formed that month to assist with the running of the home and our first website was developed by Nicola Beykirch.

In 2013 it was decided that Hope House should be registered as a Non-Profit Organisation so the Accounting Officer at the time, John Hurley, set the wheels in motion resulting in Baby Hope House being born in our inaugural meeting on 14 April 2014.

We received our NPO number on 6 June 2014, and then on 12 May 2015 we received our PBO number.

Our BEE certificate was issued on 29 September 2015, which means that when companies donate to the home, we can offer a tax certificate, as well as the BEE certificate which helps them with their BEE score.

Our social media then started expanding on our Website, Facebook and Instagram. It was felt necessary to have a debit order system available, which was put in place and is working well.

The next step was a PayPal system for donations to be made both locally and internationally. This is also up and running.

A very exciting new fundraising campaign we are running is Adopt A Cot. This is an awesome way for companies or individuals to get involved and make a financial contribution to our NPO. A company will benefit by receiving an official Tax Certificate, BEE points due to the home being Level 4 BEE compliant, as well as advertising on our media pages.

We look forward to what God has in store for the future of Baby Hope House and thank everyone who has contributed in one way or another to bring us to where we are today.