The SOS Africa Charity Story

SOS Africa was founded in January 2003 by 18-year-old UK student Matt Crowcombe, and South African school teacher Henry Matthews. Matt and Henry were dismayed by the poor standard of free schooling available to township children in South Africa. One night, over a bowl of jelly and ice-cream, they developed a plan to establish holistic education programmes to empower South Africa’s future generations through education. SOS Africa Founder Matt Crowcombe expanded the charity’s operations to the Western Cape in 2013 It all began by sponsoring the education and holistic support of a young boy from Mahikeng who had great potential but no access to good schooling. 20 years on, thanks to the support of sponsors from across the world, SOS Africa has established 4 fully operational education centres in partnership with local schools, empowering hundreds of children throughout different regions of the country. Matt and his family now live in the Western Cape overseeing the charity’s thriving education projects. This year SOS Africa celebrates its 21st anniversary and whilst the scope of our support has grown and evolved significantly during this time, our core objectives remain the same… To provide SOS Africa sponsored children with everything they need to thrive both in and out of the classroom and to raise the standard of education at our partnering schools to lower the national dropout rate. And we are delighted to share that the quality of education provided by our partnering schools continues to improve and more and more young adults graduate from our sponsorship scheme each year. “Empowerment through education” not only enables them to pursue careers of their choosing but ultimately raises the standard of living of their entire families. Our dream is to continue building holistic education centres and expanding the scope of our child sponsorship schemes to ensure equality of opportunity for children across South Africa.