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By Bilkish Hasun
For 35 years, Vision Child and Youth Care Centre has been a place of safety, faith and opportunity for children who have experienced abuse, neglect, abandonment or the loss of parental care. As the organisation celebrates its milestone anniversary, it looks back with gratitude — but also ahead to a growing need for more specialised care as the challenges facing children become increasingly complex.
Thirty-five years is a remarkable milestone for any organisation. For a child and youth care centre, however, it is measured differently — in the thousands of children who have walked through its doors, the lives rebuilt, the qualifications earned, the sporting achievements celebrated and the adults who have gone on to build lives of their own.
Since its establishment in 1991, Vision has cared for approximately 3,000 children. At one stage, the Centre cared for as many as 65 children. Today, 27 children are in its care, each carrying an individual story and a different set of needs.
Those needs are changing.
Vision is seeing more children arriving from family environments affected by substance abuse, sexual abuse, neglect and significant trauma. Some present with ADHD and behavioural or developmental challenges, while others struggle with the emotional consequences of experiences that no child should have to endure.
For Vision, this has changed what caring for a child means.
A safe home, nutritious food, schooling and clothing remain essential, but increasingly, children also require therapeutic care and specialised intervention. They need adults who understand trauma and can respond to behaviour with patience, consistency and professional expertise.
The Centre currently has one social worker caring for 27 children, supported by childcare staff working demanding 12-hour day and night shifts. When staff members are absent, colleagues have to cover the additional workload. Vision says it urgently needs greater staffing capacity, including another social worker and additional childcare workers, as well as access to an occupational therapist and other therapeutic professionals.
The need is not simply for more people to supervise children. It is for more people who can help children heal.
This is the challenge facing Vision as it enters its next 35 years: ensuring that the level of care evolves alongside the complexity of the children coming through its doors.
The organisation’s origins, however, were remarkably simple.
One of Vision’s founding members, Mr Sadique Jacobs, was visiting a children’s home while delivering a parcel for the company he worked for when he discovered that some of the children in the home were Muslim but were not receiving Islamic education or being accommodated according to their religious needs. The experience prompted him to ask whether something could be done.
When satisfactory assistance could not be found, he decided to act.
Vision began with three children. It grew to 12, then 24, and over a period of three years, approximately 64 Muslim children were removed from non-Muslim institutions and brought into an environment where their physical, educational and spiritual needs could be accommodated.
Today, Vision provides holistic care incorporating secular and Islamic education, with madrassah held every Friday. For some children, the Centre becomes home for much of their childhood. Some have remained for 12 or 15 years when reunification with their families was not possible. Turning 18 does not necessarily mean the relationship with Vision ends either; some young people continue receiving support while completing their studies, with some remaining until the age of 24.
The impact of that long-term care can be seen in the lives of former residents.
Mishka Galiem graduated from the University of Cape Town in 2025 with a BA in Social Sciences, while Nathier Galiem graduated in 2024 with a BSc in Property Engineering. In sport, Yusuf Vardien made history in 2018 when he became the first Vision resident to receive Western Province Schools Under-19 Craven Week rugby colours.
Perhaps even more significant are the former residents who have returned to serve the organisation themselves. Vision’s Managing Director was brought into care when she was only three days old, while its Centre Manager entered care at the age of nine. Both later became members of the staff.
For an organisation dedicated to changing children’s lives, there can be few greater examples of its impact than children who once needed Vision eventually becoming part of the team caring for the next generation.
Vision’s work is also sustained through a wider network of community support. Host parents provide children with opportunities to experience family environments during school holidays, while donors, volunteers and businesses contribute towards everything from food and clothing to educational and operational needs. The organisation also operates two charity shops and publishes the Vision Advertiser as part of its fundraising efforts.
As the Centre looks towards the future, the need for meaningful partnerships is becoming increasingly important. Ongoing professional support from dentists, healthcare practitioners, educators, therapists and other specialists can make a tangible difference to children’s lives. Educational enrichment, including access to technology and robotics programmes, can help expose children to possibilities beyond the circumstances in which they were raised.
But at the heart of all of this is something much simpler: the belief that every child deserves the opportunity to become more than what happened to them.
In Islam, an Amaanah is a trust entrusted to us. For Vision, every child placed in its care represents such a trust — a responsibility to protect, nurture, educate and prepare that child for a future beyond the walls of the Centre.
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And there is something profoundly humbling about that responsibility. The child whose life you help change today may one day become a professional, a parent, a community leader or an individual who quietly makes dua for the people who gave them a chance.
As Vision celebrates 35 years, it does so with gratitude for every person who has helped sustain its work and every child whose life has been touched by it. But the anniversary is also a reminder that the work is far from finished.
The world is not becoming easier for children. The circumstances bringing vulnerable children into care are becoming increasingly complex, and the response must evolve with them.
Vision’s next chapter will therefore require more than good intentions. It will require investment, professional expertise, committed staff and a community willing to stand behind the children.
Thirty-five years ago, Vision began because someone refused to accept that vulnerable children should simply be overlooked.
That principle remains unchanged.
The faces have changed. The challenges have changed. The needs have changed.
But the responsibility remains.
Because children are not only our responsibility today. They are our future. And every child entrusted to our care is an Amaanah worth protecting.
Bilkish Hasun is Marketing Manager at Vision Youth and Child Care Centre.
