Tiny offices, a cramped walking area and virtually no storage space, not to mention no place for inhouse emotional counselling – this is just what the Cross Connect Community Outreach (CCCO) had to put up with over the past couple of years.

This made their outreach work all the more difficult. This community support group has always been prone to explosive growth, up to the point where their workspace became unreasonably confined. But still, Pastor Kyle Tolman and his team kept taking in families and children from all over Mogale City.

Soon they started renting the upstairs offices as well in hopes of getting ahead of the demand from the community. But, they soon realised this space would never be enough for the amount of donations they had to sort through or the family counselling they were conducting.

In September, the CCCO finally took the leap and moved out of their place in Noordheuwel. Silverfields was calling their name, and their familiar ‘Educating, Partnering, Sharing’ signboard immediately seemed at home among the other businesses along the Voortrekker Road service road.

Except for the noteworthy amount of additional space, CCCO headquarters feels like a beehive with newly appointed staff members going about their tasks, preparing food packets for delivery to the 30 families and the few thousand young children, mostly preschoolers in their care in less developed areas.

Above and beyond this, the organisation is now looking at 60 other families to join the fold, and they wouldn’t have been able to expand as much without the new space or donations from the public and a few companies, which have become so integral to their daily operations. They’re not done expanding, though.

“We’re on the verge of starting a children’s home,” Kyle explained.

“We regularly have to take children away from their homes and don’t always have a safe place to take them.”

Right now, CCCO is looking at their options, trying to find a building or house to turn into a proper children’s home but, as Kyle noted, they’d need about R5 million in donations or seed funding to get the house off the ground, considering that they’d have to appoint full-time employees, such as community workers to run the home.

If you’d like to get in touch with CCCO, contact them on 010 100 0075 or visit the new offices at 118 Carol Road.