Empowering women over a cup of tea

On Thursday, July 14 NPC founder Monica Brown was excited to introduce S.C.R.E.A.M to communities on the West Rand.

Representatives from two other organisations attended the special occasion and celebrated with Monica in the form of a high tea, with the theme being #TeaWithTheBishop. Prior to relocating to Roodepoort a short while back, Monica used to run the NPC and its projects within Western Cape communities.

“Since it was Bishop Eugene Sinclair from Lighthouse Ministries’ birthday, the Naledi People Centre and GBV Support Group joined in to celebrate his birthday and my launch at the same time,” Brown said.

“The date is also remarkable as I’ve launched a very special project – the Princess Project – on this very day six years ago. At one point in her life every woman wanted to be a princess or wanted to be treated like one.”

When the project was established in 2016, they started out sponsoring underprivileged girls with matric dance outfits. After some time S.C.R.E.A.M was able to pay school fees for several underprivileged learners, enabling them to finish their school careers without having to worry about their school fees.

Furthermore the Princess Project is focused on rejuvenating the princess in every woman. Their aim is to align the moral value system, enabling women to make better decisions for their future.

“This project equips young girls with life-changing skills. Our mentors communicate and interact with them while sharing their stories of success and how they’ve overcome various obstacles in life,” Monica said.

“Sometimes we see young girls who have become prostitutes, alcoholics and drug abusers, and in other very bad situations. This project therefore tries to step in before these girls and young ladies end up in these circumstances that will kill and destroy them. Gender-based violence also has many faces and this is only one of the preventative measures that we apply as an organisation.”

Monica went on to say that ‘S.C.R.E.A.M’ is a word that can indicates fearfulness or anguish, and at the same time it can also indicate joyfulness.

In their case the acronym S.C.R.E.A.M stands for the following:

S – Stand up

C – Cry out

R – Reach out

E – Eliminate

A – Abuse

M – Make a difference

The event was well attended by guests from the greater Sophiatown community and two missionaries from Discovery.

“A special thanks to Elvis Ndlovu and Monica for hosting us at their beautiful place of residence. Not forgetting the beautiful couple, Mr and Mrs Tyron as well as Mr Riaan and Bonita Baggot for the hard work behind the scenes and the beautiful certificates awarded to me and Monica,” Chantell Coulter from the Naledi People Centre and GBV Support Group concluded.

If you would like to know more about S.C.R.E.A.M or the GBV Support Group, feel free to call Monica on 083 854 9293 or 067 741 9122.