Driven by the need to empower women, Myrtle Williams left her corporate job of many years to establish the NPO Ladies of Hope, based in Ennerdale, Gauteng.

Inspired by the need to uplift women

Myrtle was motivated to leave her job at the bank to start Ladies of Hope, because “When you work you don’t see the community. You go out when it’s dark, and you come back when it’s dark. When I started my organisation, I started noticing that some of these ladies needed help because I could see they were not taking good care of themselves. I started with two ladies one Wednesday morning and I explained to them that my intention was: to motivate people to become better, a better wife, a better mother, a better community member, just for women to take care of themselves. Like when you get up in the morning wash your face, do your hair, and put on some makeup just so you look neat and presentable.”

Providing home-based care for people needing chronic care

Starting with only two women in the early 2000s, Myrtle now supports over 100 ladies! The organisation has grown to provide home-based care and meals for people taking chronic medication, for example, the elderly and people with HIV/AIDS. Says Myrtle, “I started to notice that most of our elderly were alone, some of them were sick with nobody to look after them. We started visiting the elderly to pray and help them tidy the house. If they couldn’t bathe themselves, we assisted and made sure they took their medication. That’s when the home-based care programme was born. We had a little office down the road in the community of Ennerdale, and from there, the feeding scheme was established. We went into the schools once a week to give the learners a cooked meal and now we feed three days a week from our facilities. We do food parcels because there are a lot of struggling people in the community post-Covid-19.”

Providing refuge and GBV programmes for vulnerable women

When Covid-19 struck, and with the rise in gender-based violence and substance abuse, Ladies of Hope prepared rooms at their facilities for the many women who were coming in asking for a place to seek refuge. The facilities now accommodate about 14 ladies at a time, where they are helped to recover from drug addiction and rebuild their self-esteem. After a three-month programme, the women are integrated back into society.

The organisation serves many other smaller organisations in the community, also offering skills development programmes, gender-based violence support, and drug rehabilitation. Their feeding support provides meals to about 400 children a day.

Their motto is: We love what we do and that is why we care. By changing one person’s life, that person could change another person’s life and it becomes a ripple effect!

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