The township of Imizamo Yethu is situated in the picturesque seaside suburb of Hout Bay in Cape Town. Hout Bay is like a microcosm of South Africa, with a wealthy, mainly white community, living alongside the black community in Imizamo Yethu, and so called ‘coloured’ community in the township of Hangklip near the harbour.

Imizamo Yethu has a population of roughly 14,000 residents, who are mainly Xhosa speaking. The informal settlement was established in the early 1990s when 450 families who had been squatting in shacks around Hout Bay were moved to this new area on the side of a mountain overlooking the harbour.

The population of the township has mushroomed since then, as black people in search of work, education and a better future settled there.

 


In 1999 Marlena & Johann van der Walt, members of the Vineyard Church in Hout Bay, started encouraging unemployed church members to begin caring for toddlers of working parents while they were at work for a share of the wages.

Little Lambs Day-care is self-funding except for initial set-up costs and for the cost of facilities on the YMCA grounds that are provided by the SEEDS Trust.

This idea grew into a well organised day-care centre on YMCA grounds in Imizamo Yethu, Hout Bay.
Here over 120 underprivileged toddlers get good day-care, feeding and rudimentary teaching and about 10 previously unemployed women have good incomes, hope, dignity and a vocation. As a result, township mothers can seek jobs and earn the money needed to care for their families.

In 2005 Vinyard Church formed the SEEDS Trust to fund and administer Little Lambs and other Education and Empowerment projects.