The completion of the Recreation Area on Philadelphia Farm has allowed us to implement our programs and look to the future to introduce new programs.

Youth Nights (Every Friday evening).

Youth Nights focus on the youth at risk in the Citrusdal community. There are no extracurricular activities for the kids in the community or any outlets for them on the weekend. Youth Nights help promote community. We offer sports drama, dance, music, movies, worship, and fashion shows, whatever the youth request! Each youth night is getting bigger and bigger! We have also purchased a ping-pong table, fuseball table, pool table and board games, so even when there are no scheduled events, the kids still have the ability to come hang out at the Life Center. We feel this sense of community and investment in the children will enable us to build long-term trust and relationships with the children as well as the community.

Movie Nights

HCP has purchased a projector, which has made it possible for us to offer movie nights. These evenings will be open to the farm workers on the surrounding farms as a night of ‘family entertainment’. Movies will be specifically chosen, and this will be a way to counter alcohol and domestic abuse, by offering an alternative to the norm. We hope to incorporate some movie nights with other community activities like concerts and braais/BBQs.

Sunday Church

Church service is held most Sundays at the Life Center. Our goal is to reach out to the pastors of all of the churches in the Citrusdal area to sign up and to preach at the Life Center. Our hope is the church services can be a place that people feel safe and a place where farmers, farm workers, rich, poor, faithful, faith seeking, can come and worship together.

Sports Days

HCP will continue to use sport as the main catalyst for positive change, and our highest priority to ensure the success of these programs is maximizing the utilization of our newly completed sports field. The sports field will add to the effectiveness of the Life Center and our programs. Sport has proven over and over to be effective in the community. When we have run soccer/fun days in the past, the police reported the number of incidents decreased by close to 50%.

We have seen the use of sport as a medium of bringing the children of the community together, and teaching them valuable life-lessons, such as teamwork, focus and self-control has proven invaluable. Our sports days that have been done in conjunction with The Message Trust have been both effective and popular, but with our own facilities (Recreation area) we can maximize the potential of these days, by reaching more children, and by having complete access to facilities. These sports days will always include and build on our relationship with Paardekop School and the community. Through sports we strive to provide important life skills, such as teamwork, good sportsmanship, co-ordination, leadership, etc.

We envision the sports field to be a “Field of Possibilities” being utilized for much more than just sport.

Holiday Programs

Having a finished sports field and functioning Life-Centre has enabled us with the capabilities and facilities to co-ordinate weekend and holiday programs with some of the children from Paardekop School and the surrounding farms. With assistance from our major US supporter, Sammamish Presbyterian Church from Seattle, Washington and the Paardekop staff, we successfully facilitated our first holiday program in July 2016. The camp was particularly poignant for all of us at HCP, because we saw a dream of ours being realized. What was once a ruined foundation and patch of ground, has now become a vibrant space, with facilities and sports field to serve the community. We were able to fulfill a great need in the community for ‘out of school activities’ to enrich the lives of the children and to remove them from potentially harmful situations in their home environments. We have already set the dates for the holiday program next year!

After School Programs - (Future)

After school programs will fill the gap between the children finishing school and their parents finishing work. We will provide a snack and study time to help with course work, play sports, crafts, dance, drama and plan hiking activities to learn about the local flora and fauna.

Ladies and Men’s group

Olivia has started a ladies group/bible study every Thursday evening at the Life Center. The group was started in hopes of having a safe place for the ladies to share. The response has been incredible and the group is growing week by week. With the success of the ladies group, we have started a weekly men’s group.