Tree of Life are a church and 24-7 Prayer Community in Manenberg, South Africa. They’ve been working in the community for 15 years, and today, they are on the blog to share about an exciting new venture – and we, as the wider 24-7 Prayer family, get the chance to join in!

The historic and systemic injustice in South Africa keeps life in Cape Town pretty complicated. We somehow top the charts as the most beautiful holiday destination, but also the most violent, with highest homicide rates etc. Truly, Manenberg – a community established during the Apartheid regime, where people of colour were forced to move – feels like it’s at the centre of that tension.

If you look one way you’ll see the best view (in our opinion) of Table Mountain in the city, you’ll see smiling, happy children, parents doing everything they can to educate, support and raise their kids with the little available… but if you look the other way, you’ll see gangs facing off, people stealing to survive, drugs sold and used in broad daylight and a casual but mistrusted police presence.

Tree of Life are a 24-7 prayer community who have lived and worked here for the last 15 years. We are made of up of local community members, and a few relocators from other parts of South Africa and overseas. Our heart has always been prayer with legs. Praying – on the streets, in homes, for healing, for heaven, for the dead to rise, for the shalom of the community – and then getting our hands dirty and trying to answer some of our prayers, empowered by the Spirit.

We run two discipleship homes: one for young men, desperate to live a life free from gangs and drugs, and one for young women and their kids, hoping for a better future free from drugs and abuse. While slow, steady and often messy, we are starting to see things really work. Young people are making it through our programme into sheltered living and employment, family reconciliation – all the fruit we have been dreaming of for years.

So rather than sit back and chill, we felt like it was good time to pray again. This time, we’ve felt God call us to go wide. We love small, we love deep, but it’s time for something new.

We’re dreaming to buy a building in Manenberg where we can have a community hub, a 24-7 prayer space for the whole of Manenberg, and where we can run healing programmes that address some of the trauma this community has experienced.

Our vision is to create space for social enterprises to be nurtured, all the best mental health support available at a reasonable cost, and amazing programmes that invest in the youth – dance, creative arts, school support, homework clubs – you name it, we’re dreaming it! We want to partner with individual service providers and community programmes to see the community of Manenberg healed.

And so our prayers have found legs again. And to be honest, we need a lot of help and a lot of prayer. We are working to buy and renovate an amazing building which will become Manenberg Healing Centre.

To make this vision possible, we need to raise £185,000. That’s $250,000 or R4 million. We’ve launched a crowdfunder to reach this goal over just 45 days. Could you join us?