Out of her Participation in Landmark Education’s Team Management Leadership Program (TMLP), London native Jo Lawrence has formed a project to assist AIDS orphans in the Sweetwaters community in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. Titled ‘Sponsor a Mother’, the project works with Love is All You Need, a London based charity that impacts poverty and social conditions in South Africa and other countries in a wide variety of ways, to fund local “mothers” who go the Sweetwaters community and provide food, medicine, help with the washing and schoolwork, and whatever else is appropriate.

The need is dire–There are more than 600 parentless kids in the Sweetwaters community, being raised by siblings as young as 8 years old. Most children lack food and water, cooking facilities and electricity. They live in crumbling, ill-maintained homes and are vulnerable to robbery and rape from outsiders. Sponsor a Mother seeks to immediately increase number of and income of these foster “mothers” who visit the children, while planning long term solutions for the rebuilding of the community.

To get involved or get more information, check out the Love is All You Need website.