THE NEED:
Africa consists of 57 countries with a population of 1.7 billion. The population is estimated to be 5 Billion by 2050. Africa is blessed with human and natural resources. It is estimated that while the average world age is 29 years, the average age in Africa is 19 years. Africa’s 30.5 million square kilometers of land can contain Europe, China, the United States of America, and some other countries.
Yet eight of the ten poorest countries in the world are in Africa. Africa is the only continent in which all the countries receive donor funds. No African country exists in the non-development assistance committee (DAC) donors.
Though Africa is empowered with a youthful population and vast natural and mineral resources, poverty is still a significant issue. The question then to be answered is why is Africa poor? What needs to happen to see African communities transit from this poverty state to a place of prosperity? This complex situation will require a collaborative effort. At the same time, there are assumptions that we need good leaders to bring about significant changes in African contexts. However, there was little empirical evidence to suggest good leadership for change or the difference between simple improvements and genuinely transformational change. Identity crisis, ignorance, and injustice contribute to the lack of leadership in Africa. Joy Bringers organization will seek to answer this leadership gap embedded in the African person. We will look at the individual and cultural transformation resulting in community transformation. The binding domain we will be working through is the family, which comprises parents and children; Family and affinities are the basis of the local church and the society. Each family member is equipped with gifting, vision, callings, and work in the world God created while they were in their mother’s womb (Psalm 139:14-16). Family is the original design by God, which has become the source of conflict that has impacted the church and society. We desire to solve the African leadership gap and have come up with a vision.

OUR VISION
Joybringers is a faith-based leadership service organization that exists to see people in families and affinities transformed from disempowerment to maximum fruitfulness—poverty to exponential productivity.
We believe the poverty challenge in the African person is not external but internal. Three types of poverty are our focus. These are poverty of relationships due to dysfunctional relationships; Poverty of the mind as a result of ignorance due to the veiled mindset leading to marred identity. This ignorance results in people placing their rights and entitlement above responsibility. Thirdly is the poverty of purpose due to injustice resulting in all forms of social ills.

OUR PURPOSE
To see people and communities transformed through character, skill, and entrepreneurial development. Through leader development, leadership development, and leading for results. We aim to move people from a mindset of survival to service, a mindset of rights and entitlements to ownership, responsibility, and accountability. We seek to help people move from employment to a deployment mindset. We assist people in discovering their giftedness through character training, refining their gifts by skill training, and deploying their talents to serve others through entrepreneurship training.

MISSION: Joy at heart, Joy at home, and Joy at work through a Marketplace/Workplace compliant church, couples, and communities training program. Our mission is to equip and empower men and women for transformed kingdom family living. (leader development, leadership development, and leading for results through character, competence, and commitment).

OUR STRATEGY:
We are a faith leadership-based service organization that is involved in developing people in families and communities development. We provide training, mentoring, coaching, and counseling to people in their affinities. We need to incorporate an accountability aspect, this is key for sustainability.
We will differentiate ourselves by providing asset and need-based training, networking and supporting critical stakeholders, and engaging in research and advocacy regarding healthy family, church, and community life.
The transformational leadership resource center provides adequate resources for policy, outreach, and leadership development. This gives voice to those with no voice.
“Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy” (Proverbs 31:8-9). We seek to pursue a change in individuals coming from different families and as families are transformed we hope to see broken systems, etc restored.

Currently, in our communities, there is a strong imbalance between power and justice. Power is generally associated with injustice. We endeavor to see through our model that justice and power will need to be connected so that whatever is justice is powerful, and what is powerful is just for the path to restoring this anomaly.

“To do justice, then, is to be able to see and recognize the uneven distribution of power, and to take steps to change the system so that we can redistribute power equally.”

The goal of what we do is that those we serve will equip and encourage others in the transformed life, working together for social and cultural change at the local level. They contribute to a growing movement of transformed individuals seeking to restore healthy family leadership lifestyles to our communities and society (2 Tim 2:2).
Every culture or aspect of it has areas that conflict with the knowledge of God (2 Corinthians 10:3-5). The purpose of the research will be based on two areas-establishing the truths and exposing the wounds and lies. The fact to be established is that the potential development of the communities is in the communities. We operate through appreciative inquiry by focusing on the African communities’ strengths and looking out for beauty. Participatory action research, which minimizes power differences between researchers and constituents, increases participants’ knowledge, and promotes social change, is used. The second is by exposing the lies by acting as a counter-culture to expose and challenge all the negative social structures that hinder personal, societal, and systemic transformation. We seek to express the kingdom as a counter-culture in bringing about transformation in the various cultures as they are inconsistent with God’s kingdom. Advocacy aims to bring every aspect of culture expressed as a policy in line with God’s kingdom. The research and advocacy will seek to bridge the gap between faith and action or belief and behavior.

Networking and Support-We recognize that God is already at work in our communities, and we pray that our eyes are open to see what He is doing. Whenever God is about to do something, He raises a person or people. We will continue to find out where He is working and who He is raising to transform a particular affinity. As catalysts, we find the leaders raised to solve the complexities in our communities (champions) and support them. Our role is to come alongside these champions to resource them and mentor them to raise a team that will bring about change in their communities and fulfills their passion (Matthew 9:35-39). We take as our shared vision to catalyze and achieve a watershed moment in history.
Our goal in mentoring is to help people find their true selves. This true identity submits to the future residing inside of us. God of the future calls us from selfishness and ignorance to a place of knowledge irrespective of our experiences. We call people from their past and present to their future.

STRATEGIC ANCHORS: TRANSFER
T-Training of church leaders, couples, and emerging entrepreneurs (champions).
R-Research through providing quality tools and resources for community transformation.
A-Advocacy by giving voice to the voiceless and ensuring that the voice of the voiceless are heard by uplifting the lives of the poor and needy
N-Networking with champions through mentoring, coaching, and counseling.
S-Supporting Champions to fulfill their mission and impact needy communities.
F-Fund development
E-Effective organizations governance by organizational assessments
R-Raising leaders through establishing a leadership development culture

OUR JOURNEY
On November 9, 2001, after experiencing a car hijack. While in the hospital ward, I heard an audible voice of God saying, “Where do the people who shot you reside?” This experience led to the registration of Joy Bringer’s organization in 2005 with the vision of breaking the cycle of crime.
Joy bringers began in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 2005 with a vision of transforming the Correctional Centre. It has trained over 5000 inmates and about 1000 Correctional Service officials in various need-based courses in the City of Johannesburg. We have also expanded into Nigeria, where prison inmates have been undergoing our training since 2010. In addition, we have run training programs for various youths in schools and camps. We have worked extensively in the township communities of Soweto, Benoni, and Kagiso in the Gauteng province.
In 2019, the organization went into a time of re-assessing its effectiveness. The stakeholders concluded that the root of poverty in the African communities was not the crime challenges but the family unit’s dysfunction. This understanding led to the clarifying and realignment of the vision and mission of Joy Bringers. As an organization, we have moved from establishing to the existing and surviving phase. We are presently at the living stage, and we want to see Joy bringers at the thriving stage as an organization.
JB’s experience in theological and leadership knowledge, working with the informal and township communities, has equipped us to serve the families and affinities in the African communities.

OUR MODEL
Our organization’s goal is that the service is the centerpiece. But, at the same time, ownership and responsibility are felt among staff and volunteers doing the work. Joy Bringers offers the kind of skill set that we all need at this time. It is meant for a loosely affiliated network, allowing every individual or organization to maintain its own identity or autonomy. It invites the individual to contribute to the pool of assets that might help solve a complex problem. We work in collaboration and progress by learning and doing.

OUR CORE VALUES
Stewardship – To be good stewards of the mandate God has given us, to be good stewards of God’s resources with integrity and humility. To help husbands and wives to be good stewards of their families as married couples and parents. It is to exhibit integrity. Stewardship is being personally accountable, responsible, and exhibiting integrity, which is power. It is shalom IN people. This stewardship deals with correcting a poverty mindset.

• Commitment -We work with a great sense of loyalty to God, people, and families. To be committed to loving unconditionally with consistency and accepting each other through God’s eye. Respect, value, sacrifice for each other, and show compassion toward everyone. Commitment is shalom FOR people. It is the dedication to deploying their gifting to serve others. It is seeking human flourishing. It deals with correcting the poverty of purpose.
•

• Harmony – to align people, families, and communities to God. To walk in unity and remain teachable and be transparent. To seek justice together and look for reconciliation by helping people find unity, wholeness, and justice with each other. Harmony is the establishment of relationships at the interpersonal, ethnic, and even global levels (Shalom BETWEEN people). This deals with the poverty of relationships.
•

OUR RESULTS
Our potential outcomes are at both the individual and community levels.
Our potential outcomes are at both the individual and community levels.

Individual Level:
• Increase in skills, knowledge, empowerment, and self-efficacy.
• Marriages become more empowered to deal with conflict and communication and build intimacy that will provide a conducive environment for children’s growth.
• Our programs improve individual leadership skills in marital and relational life through our programs.
• There is the empowering of individuals in the families to discover, develop and deploy their gifts to serve the communities, thereby increasing productivity.

Community level:
• Affinities are empowered to increasingly recognize and challenge conditions and structures that lead to their disempowerment or negatively impact their well-being.
• Stronger and cohesive families and affinities will result in social capital changes, social cohesion, and improved health.
• Create communities that are better and safer for women and children.
• Training of facilitators will empower the community members with the resources to implement the community decisions.

EXPANSION

Joy Bringers will be operating in all the nations of Africa and globally to help bring about transformation in individuals, their families, affinities, and societies, resulting in increased productivity in the continent.

The aim is to start in South Africa and create a model of family transformation that works. From the successful programs we want to train champions that we want to deploy to the different countries in Africa and globally and replicate the model.

The practical tools will involve setting up communities of transformation (family leadership transformation centers) in significant African towns and cities:
1. To equip and empower people to become productive in their personal, home, and work life.
2. Theology of work training weaved into the church, family, and businesses.
3. Entrepreneurial online and face-to-face training, coaching, and mentoring with partnerships through collaboration.
4. An annual leadership management retreat for the core leadership team.

SUSTAINABILITY
Different layers of accountability represent joy bringers. The organization operates as a network, with the 7-10 member board forming the policies and the ten-member executive team coordinating the operations by strategically executing the organization’s goals. The multigenerational board members and the competent and character-based management team form the core leadership. They undergo yearly development training to strengthen the organization’s health and enlarge our capacity to implement our strategies. Each core leader, staff, and volunteer must be gifted and called to the vision before enlisted. The organization is managed through the organization structure and design to achieve our strategic goals within identified boundaries and context.

We apply the three pillars of sustainability-environment, economic and social good to ensure the organization is sustainable.
The Environmental leg of sustainability is based on developing a healthy culture driven by core values and adapted design to function by networks. We run a high-trust, low-control workforce. The core leadership is equipped to adapt the organization’s running to the various environmental changing contexts. Leadership development is our obligation to identify, encourage, and help develop other emerging leaders to ensure the organization’s continuity across generations is vigorously pursued. The programs are universal and will be able to be applied in different environments in Africa as the principles are standard.

The Economic leg of sustainability involves an innovative fund development drive to decrease dependence on one source of funding. We are continuously creating new sources of generating funds by increasing membership recruitment and contributions, sales of our products and services produced through the effective use of our skills to make income, and engaging in strategic fundraising and replenishments by nurturing strategic resources and assets.
For sustainability, the three pillars of forming clarity of mission (strategy). Economics (the management), and core-leadership development (the culture), will be the comparative advantage for Joy Bringers.
In the Social leg of sustainability, “We do not rebuild what we had but build for the future.” In this new normal of decreased mobility and increased digitability. The new wine and new wineskin thinking and strategy will need to be adapted. We will collaborate and seek new partnerships, seek creative, innovative, and entrepreneurial leaders, and operate by serving and empowering the poor and the needy, which are in the majority, working from the bottom to the top.

Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) and Financial Management
Joy bringers measure the program’s success through an effective M&E system. The M&E serves as an accountability tool that determines the effectiveness of the investment made toward the plan. A critical contribution by Joy Bringers is the use of evidence-based approaches to our strategic anchors.
Regarding process monitoring, various tools will be developed and utilized for M&E purposes. Such will include attendance registers for the trainees and pre-and post-tests to determine the attitudes, perceptions, and skills levels before and after the program. For job placement purposes, we will keep appointment letters on file. Planning sessions and quarterly program implementation reviews will be held and will adjust implementation plans accordingly. Monthly, semi-, and annual reports will be compiled and shared with the donors depending on the agreement.

Strategic Partners.
We manage the organization through the organizational structure, which is designed to achieve goals within the identified boundaries of political, economic, sociocultural, etc. The organization receives finances from membership recruitment contributions, the sale of products from our assets, and asset-based courses and mentoring. We also accept donations from various businesses and churches. We will challenge each donor for a more profound commitment due to our exponential growth.

Revive Initiatives (trading as Revive) is a locally based NPO formed to respond to the need to address the crime and poverty issues in South Africa, by serving and assisting the disadvantaged in the Gauteng, with particular focus on parolees and ex-offenders.

 

Revive is a CIPC registered NPO since 2017, is governed by a Board and is an approved PBO with Section 18A Status with SARS. Revive is legally bound by its constitution. The management and volunteers are all passionate about serving and helping the poor and disadvantaged.

 

Revive’s key focus remains to journeying alongside and assist parolees and ex-offenders with their reintegration and rehabilitation, therefore doing what is possible to prevent them from re -offending thus, in so doing, bring down the crime and re-offending rate.

 

However, since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and the lock downs from 2020 we have created a second focus with our attention being on assisting those who have been affected, the unemployed and displaced in our community of Edenvale.

 

Download our NPO Certificate

Download the Revive Business Plan

Finetown is an informal settlement close to Ennerdale. Some have called Finetown the land of the forgotten. The population is about 30, 000 people, with an unemployment rate of over 85%. Jenny serves a project called Tsoaranang (“Joining Hands”), based in the home of Mama Florina, an 80-year-old widow and mother to 10 orphan children. Mama Florina runs a soup kitchen to feed over 75 children in the community and oversees the work of 8 home-based caregivers. Jenny Teichert enjoys assisting and encouraging Mama Florina, the orphans, and the caregivers in various ways: providing spiritual growth through Discovery Bible studies, emotional support through grief counselling, as well as practical training and provision for the physical & educational needs of the caregivers and orphans. Jenny also explores other avenues like edible crop gardening and entrepreneurial business training to help the caregivers start small businesses in the community and to be more self–sustaining.

 

There are so many opportunities for others to come encourage, meet and observe, pray or share a testimony or any helpful skill they may have to offer. Visitors are welcome to walk in the community with the caregivers as they visit and pray for the sick. There is also an opportunity to help with the edible gardens or even coach them in starting small businesses. Counselling for the caregivers is also needed.

 

Contact

Jenny Teichert: 072 477 2942

Email: jennyteichert@oci.org

 

Fellowship through fitness is a community service that uses fitness and self-defence to engage with people of all ages. These disciplines are also used as a tool to share the Gospel and educate people on issues like anti-human trafficking. The focus is on providing vulnerable people with the skills to protect themselves from harm and to do so with a Gospel-centred outlook on also protecting those around them. We work with a number of different organisations and usually supplement mission programs with our hourly sessions where possible.

 

For more information on what we do, email: sharon@fellowshipfitness.co.za