A pastor from a local church has taken it upon himself to feed and look after those who are less fortunate and live on Helderberg streets.
Pastor Phillimon Sikireta (53) from Bay Christian Family Church in Strand started his own non-profit organisation (NPO) called Uplifting Others, with the sole purpose of uplifting and assisting people who are living on the streets and who, in most cases, don’t have anywhere else to go.
Sikireta noticed when he was growing up that there were other people who had less than himself. He started taking it upon himself to help out these kinds of people.
“I did a bit of research and I began to see how people, who had no homes of their own, lived on the streets. I realised that I had to get closer to these people so that I could spread the word of God and I decided to start giving food to the homeless,” says Sikireta.
“I never give money, but I started giving food and started praying for them.”
He once gave a homeless man a banana and the man was so grateful that he folded up his poster, which he was using to ask for money, and sat down to eat the fruit.
“Weekly I hold a soup kitchen close to Shoprite in Strand and here I noticed that these people were all without hope. I started off by reuniting one of these homeless people with his family.”
Since then he has reunited 17 homeless people in the Strand with their families across South Africa.
“I am proud to say that seven of these people now have jobs again and they are fully reunited with their families from whom they once were estranged.”
But before any of this happened, the pastor held one-on-one sessions with each of the homeless people and he first had to visit their families before they could be reunited. “Drugs and alcohol abuse were two of the main factors that people who live on the street have had to deal with. These families first have to break those chains of drug and alcohol dependency that these people are faced with. It is not a easy path, but it can be done,” says Sikireta.
He still has many challenges to overcome, but he wants to make it his mission to change as many lives as he possibly can.
“If I leave this earth one day, then I want to leave, knowing that I have done all that I can.”
