Registered NPC & PBO · CIPC Reg: 2012/032787/08 · PBO Reg: 1086159

OVERVIEW

One to One Africa Children’s Fund has maintained an unbroken presence in OR Tambo District, Eastern Cape – one of South Africa’s most remote and under-resourced regions – since 2012. We deploy trained local women as Mentor Mothers, alongside mobile health services, community programmes, and a fully digital monitoring system, to provide pregnant women and children under five with consistent, trusted care. A formal MoU with the Eastern Cape Department of Health anchors every programme in the public health system – designed to be measurable, and outlast donor cycles.

KEY STATISTICS

96

% Immunisation Rate

0

% Mother-to-Child HIV Transmission Rate

38

Villages in Nyandeni, OR Tambo

10557

Direct Beneficiaries Reached Per Year

OUR VALUES

Child Centred  – Community Rooted
Evidence Driven – Systems Strengthening

THE CHALLENGE

OR Tambo District is one of South Africa’s most rural and under-resourced regions – ranked last among all 52 health districts nationally on several key indicators. For a woman pregnant in Nyandeni sub-district, which falls under OR Tambo District, this is not a statistic. It means walking hours to a clinic that may not have the staff or supplies she needs, delivering without skilled support, and returning home to a village where unemployment exceeds 90% and the nearest follow-up care is just as far away. The Eastern Cape’s maternal mortality ratio stands at 133.9 per 100,000 live births, well above the national average, and OR Tambo records the highest infant and under-five in-hospital mortality of any district in the province: 750 infant deaths and 882 under-five deaths in a single year. The district also carries a severe acute malnutrition case fatality rate of 13.1 – the highest in the Eastern Cape.

OUR APPROACH

We recruit and employ people from the communities we serve – not volunteers, but paid community health workers who carry real caseloads and real accountability. Our cadre of Mentor Mothers, Mentor Brothers and Youth Champions bring cultural authority and lived experience that no outside worker can replicate. Each Mentor Mother carries around 150 households, visiting families from pregnancy through early childhood and delivering care that follows the whole family across the full lifecycle. Wraparound programmes extend this to fathers, young children, adolescents, and women’s economic independence. All programmes operate under a formal MoU with the Eastern Cape Department of Health, with live data feeding directly into government systems – built to scale through government adoption and outlast any donor cycle.

THE ENABLE PLATFORM

Frontline Delivery: Trusted Care, Door to Door

Mentor Mothers recruited from the villages they serve conduct door-to-door maternal and child health visits across 38 Nyandeni villages – delivering ANC/PNC support, PMTCT adherence, growth monitoring, immunisation, nutrition counselling, and psychosocial care to approximately 150 households each. More than 80% live with HIV, bringing peer credibility no outside worker can replicate. All data is captured in real time through CommCare, fed directly into DoH systems.

Wraparound Programmes:
Reaching the Whole Family

Five complementary programmes extend care beyond the mother-child dyad: a Mobile Clinic reaching 20 remote service points monthly; Enable Play Learning delivering ECD, nutrition, and literacy in the home; Mentor Brothers engaging men as family and maternal health advocates; an Adolescent Health programme linking young people to HIV prevention and SRH; and Enable-I building economic independence through vocational training and cooperative enterprise.

Systems Change:
Impact at Scale Through Government

Enable Plus trains 3,000 Eastern Cape DoH Community Health Workers in the Mentor Mother methodology through a cascade model, CommCare mHealth tools, and structured field supervision – underpinned by a three-year MoU with the DoH and a clear pathway to full institutionalisation.

ENABLE PLATFORM

ENABLE MENTOR MOTHER

Community Health & HIV Prevention

 Local women, recruited from the villages they serve, work as paid frontline health workers across 38 communities in Nyandeni. Through regular door-to-door visits they deliver antenatal and postnatal support, PMTCT adherence, nutrition counselling, growth monitoring, and psychosocial care – building the kind of trusted, consistent relationship that health facilities alone cannot provide.

ENABLE PLUS

Health Systems Strengthening

Enable Plus trains Eastern Cape Department of Health community health workers in the Mentor Mother methodology through a structured cascade model. To date, 43 Master Trainers, 157 Outreach Team Leaders, and 1,729 CHWs have been trained on CommCare. Designed for full government adoption, with training and supervision embedded in public health infrastructure.

ENABLE PLAY LEARNING

Early Childhood Development & Nutrition

Home-based early learning grounded in the WHO Nurturing Care Framework, delivered in villages with no ECD centres. Mentor Mothers run bi-weekly sessions on stimulation, literacy, responsive caregiving, and nutrition. Over 916 households have received seedlings and home garden support, with 830 children and caregivers reached in the most recent annual cohort.

ENABLE MENTOR BROTHERS

Gender Transformation & Fatherhood

Mentor Brothers lead structured community dialogues on positive fatherhood, HIV prevention, gender norms, and non-violence. In the most recent reporting period, 1,377 men were reached and 545 food gardens established. The programme has contributed to reported reductions in GBV incidents and increased male attendance at clinics for HIV testing and treatment.

ADOLESCENT HEALTH

Next-Generation Resilience

Youth Champions deliver peer-led HIV prevention, sexual and reproductive health education, and mental health support linked to mobile clinic testing and PrEP. 810 adolescents are enrolled per programme cycle, with over 1,000 reached through community awareness events each year.

ENABLE MOBILE CLINIC

Last-Mile Clinical Care

 A mobile facility staffed by professional nurses and counsellors, rotating monthly across 20 remote service points. Services include HIV testing, PrEP initiation, NCD screening, maternal and postnatal care, immunisations, growth monitoring, and nutrition assessment. For many families, it is the only accessible point of clinical care.

ENABLE-I

Economic Empowerment & Enterprise Development

Funded by the Julius Baer Foundation (2025 – 2027), Enable-I establishes a community vocational hub in Nyandeni sub-district on land gifted by local leadership. Each cohort of 80 women receives training in garment-making, shoe-making, and recycling, alongside business development, financial literacy, and cooperative formation. Participants come directly from OTOA’s programme communities, where 90% are unemployed and 95% have no income-generating activity.

mHEALTH & DATA

Paperless since 2020. Our CommCare platform – custom-built with Dimagi – captures household data offline in real time across all programme modules, integrating directly with the DoH’s DHIS2 and Tier.Net platforms. Power BI dashboards are reviewed weekly; built-in escalation triggers flag malnourished children, missed appointments, and ART interruptions for same-week response. In 2022, OTOA’s data identified an Eastern Cape malnutrition crisis nine months before it appeared in provincial reporting.

Local Work, Global Goals

OTOA’s work is embedded within South Africa’s National Development Plan and Primary Health Care agenda, operating under a formal MoU with the Eastern Cape Department of Health. Our programmes contribute directly to SDG 3 (Good Health and Well-being), SDG 4 (Quality Education), SDG 5 (Gender Equality), and SDG 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth). At the global level, OTOA is an active contributor to the agenda on ending AIDS in children by 2030 and aligns with the Global Strategy for Women’s, Children’s, and Adolescents’ Health (2016-2030).

Partners & Networks include:

▪  Eastern Cape Department of Health (MoU)

▪  Department of Social Development

▪  Home Affairs & SASSA

▪  Traditional Leadership Structures

▪  Men’s Parliament (EC Chapter)

▪  Eastern Cape AIDS Council

▪  Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund

▪  Dimagi (CommCare infrastructure)

Funders:

▪ Julius Baer Foundation

▪ UBS Optimus Foundation

▪ ViiV Healthcare

▪ DG Murray Trust

▪ Sanlam

▪  Seneca Trust

Gqibelo Dandala, Executive Director

Gqibelo is a Pan-African social entrepreneur and MBA graduate of GIBS who founded and led FOTAD — a girl-child development organisation — for 15 years before joining OTOA in 2021. She has served on the UN Women Civil Society Advisory Group and brings deep roots in South African social development. OTOA’s 132-person team is led by a COO with executive experience across three continents and a CA(SA)-qualified Head of Finance with independent annual audits.

We welcome the opportunity to tell you more.  Contact Val Govender, Head of Business Development: val@onetooneafrica.org  ·  www.onetooneafrica.org