While Shield Consortium has undertaken social support projects like poverty alleviation, family stability, training, skills development and youth empowerment in communities like Alexander, Tembisa, and Soweto, we strive to undertake and do much more because the social needs of the poor are limitless in order to impact the lives of millions of people and homes, and empower the people to acquire meaningful entrepreneurial skills, become gainfully employed in businesses, and become self-reliant thus enabling them to overcome their challenges, impact the community, improve quality of life and bring about positive social change.

The United Nations reported that 1 in 5 South Africans are living in extreme poverty, an evidence of the poor economic growth which has decelerated to an estimated 0.7%. According to the World Bank and Statistics SA, approximately 55.5 percent (30.3 million people) of the population is living below national poverty levels (1.90 U.S. dollars or zar 28 daily), a scenario predominant in the communities where we are focused.

The South African poverty scenario is mediated and complicated by social maladies like poor skills or total ineptitude, high unemployment rates and inadequate social support and infrastructure. We have also found that in current times, with many social determinants of disease, most social maladies don’t occur in isolation, rather they are inter-related. As such treatment and interventions in the victims of these social maladies, stigmas and traumas often times require a multipronged and multidisciplinary approach. Agreeably, if social problems are not addressed on time, they fester and become compounded into more serious social problems, as such these factors result in very poor standards and quality of living, severe deprivation, poor health, hunger, starvation, desperation, drug abuse, violence and crime. As our operational efforts grow, many other communities facing severe social deprivation will be included in our programs, with the potential to reach and impact an even larger number of homes and community members, improving standard of living and inherent income generating ability.