A passion to nurture people with disabilities, which was ignited while working for a hospice in Cape Town, has driven Nosintu Mcimeli Kwepile (45) of Xilinxa location in Ngqamakwe, to start a non-profit organisation (NPO) to champion the needs of people living with disabilities.
Nosintu, a mother of five, is the founder of an NPO called Abanebhongo Persons With Disabilities, which mainly focuses on helping vulnerable and bedridden people in her home village of Xilinxa and surrounding villages to create vegetable gardens in their homesteads to sustain themselves.
She said the idea to start an NPO came after undergoing a two-year training, initiated by the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC), where she, with other women from across the SADC region, were trained as community activists.
“I worked in a hospice for people with disabilities in Cape Town for over seven years. I then left the job to join the office of the then Western Cape premier, Helen Zille, and this is when, in 2012, I learned about the training of women as community activists by the SADC which I was privileged to be part of,” she said.
Nosintu returned to her home village of Xilinxa after the completion of her community activism training in 2015, where she immediately began her community development work targeting, specifically, people with disabilities.
She further revealed that the decision was an easy one for her because she also lives with a disability, as she was a childhood victim of polio.
Her NPO, Abanebhongo Persons With Disabilities, was registered in 2020 and has been at the forefront of running several charitable initiatives such as a community soup kitchen, and organising food parcels for the needy, especially since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as boasting over 100 vegetable gardens that it has helped establish at homes of people with disabilities.
Her recent achievement is securing her village a borehole, after years of its not having access to clean drinking water. “The installation of the borehole came about after I did an interview with an SABC radio station on the plight of my community, especially people with disabilities, of not having access to clean drinking water.
“The interview got the attention of a company in Gqeberha, which then contacted me and offered to drill and install a borehole to alleviate our plight,” she said.
The installation of the borehole was a perfect Christmas present for the Xilinxa community, as clean drinking water flowed from it for the first time on December 25, 2020.
She has thanked the Eastern Cape Department of Rural Development and Agrarian Reform for supplying them with seedlings for their vegetable gardens, as well as the National Lotteries Commission for donating food parcels for those in need.
Nosintu said she hoped someone could donate a vehicle to her NPO to take their community development work to people with disabilities in other far-flung villages of the province.
