“To live well is to work well, to show a good activity.”
- Thomas Aquinas
COFA helps create jobs for local workers through the construction it has supported and by providing start-up support for entrepreneurs. An innovative aspect of the St. Peter Christian College campus developed by COFA is the construction of a building for commercial leasing. With micro loans from COFA, local entrepreneurs have been able to establish a commercial laundry, a sewing operation and a bakery. The construction of a greenhouse on the campus resulted in more employment as well as lowered food cost for the campus. We have already disbursed over 30 micro-loans to start-up businesses in other parts of the Middleburg South Africa region.
We utilize the expertise of local organizations, such as our work with Feed-a-Child and the Columbus Incubator to develop a solar vegetable dryer on the campus. Feed-a-Child has also worked with COFA on a project to teach a community near Lydenburg, Mpumalanga how to create a vegetable garden, the produce of which may eventually be dried in our solar dryer.
COFA also helped its sister nonprofit, Christian Outreach for Uganda, start a greenhouse project by sponsoring training for its workers.
Vines & Threads and Laundry in the Entrepreneur building on the St. Peter Christian College campus
Agro-Max students
COFA provided funding students to learn greenhouse farming technology from the Uganda program, Agro-Max.
Nxgen
COFA-Uganda has helped train the workers at the Nxgen greenhouse. Click here for a video of the Nxgen project.
Greenhouse on the St. Peter Christian College campus
Ledumeleng vegetable garden
KITCHEN and disabled children’s daycare
COFA helped fund the construction of a daycare center on the St. Peter Christian College campus that hosted 30 disabled children for a daycare that employed daycare workers and cooks for their twice a day meals.
New Buildings
COFA has helped fund construction at the St. Peter Christian College campus that is still ongoing. Local workers have been employed and trained throughout the construction period, some of whom have started their own construction business.