As we close off 2025, Afrika Tikkun Uthando Centre’s operational manager, Amanda Manda, finds herself reflecting on a year that stretched, refined and reminded the organisation why the work they continuously do still matters.

Manda explained that 2025 was a year of both accountability and elevation.

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“On the operations and infrastructure side, we strengthened our safety and compliance culture through extensive work on kitchen compliance, food safety, and emergency readiness. We built systems that forced us, as a centre, to think long-term rather than event-by-event.”

The centre also had celebrations like Heritage Day that reminded the staff of how culture and identity can unite a community.

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Uthando Centre also pivoted its impact activations, such as G2K – Garden to Kindergarten (an agriculture programme for young people) – so children could plant, harvest, and build a dignified, sustainable relationship to food.

The operational manager highlighted that there were lows too: “In the NGO space, the work is heavy and often thankless in real time, and funding uncertainty remains a constant tension. Our young people face harsh social realities such as GBV, unemployment, hunger, and sometimes the gap between the systems we build and the systems that fail them feels overwhelming.”

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