History

History of supporting the Udobo School

Action Udobo is a UK registered charity, which has grown out of work started by a small group of people at Norton Methodist Church within Letchworth Garden City, Hertfordshire.

The Emakhosini project was started to provide houses for six unhoused and destitute families of orphaned children – twenty children in all – in a village about 100km from Durban. The people of Norton soon realised that it needed more resources than they could properly provide and so they invited several friends at Central Methodist Church, Letchworth Garden City, to join in, which they willingly and generously did. Nearly three thousand pounds was finally secured and the project was successfully concluded by mid-2004. As that project was being completed, Norton Methodist Church were then introduced by the mother of Jenny Victor [Action Udobo Secretary] to the Montclair Methodist Church, which was then just starting a new project to provide a pre-school education and care for very deprived children aged four to six years in the Montclair area of Durban.

That project started with three children and one teacher in April 2004. By the end of 2005 it had one class of twenty-five children with two teachers and progressed from there to the present school of around 100 children.

This work came under the direction of the ‘UK Friends of Udobo’. At the end of August 2012 the Friends of Udobo account was closed and ‘Action Udobo’ was born.