About Us

STATUTORY OBLIGATIONS

City Mission is a registered Non-Profit organisation (NPO 002-911) and Public Benefit Organisation (PBO No:  130001756) and undergoes annual external audits conducted by registered and independent Auditors. 

 

THE ORIGIN AND ROOTS OF CITY MISSION

Frederick George Lowe who was born in Nottingham, England and arrived in Cape Town 1897.   He found a job at one of the city’s largest wholesalers and served them well, but his heart was gripped by the plight of the city’s poor. 

When he started the simple act of sharing his lunch with the hungry, he must have had no idea that it would turn into a ministry to thousands which would continue to today, 118 years later.  He was organising food for so many poor people and the ministry was growing so quickly that in 1902 he formalized the work, calling it the City Slum Mission, later renamed Cape Town City Mission or City Mission, as it is known today.

Our purpose remains the same, to develop resources and partnerships that enables us to work with communities in need for their transformation and empowerment and, to build a better society for all people irrespective of race, colour or creed.  In areas ridden with poverty and degenerating physical conditions, City Mission has worked tirelessly, making significant and lasting impacts in the lives of individuals and communities, and still continues to do so.  

 

OUR VALUES AND PURPOSE

The aim of CITY MISSION is to break the cycles of poverty.

We believe in empowering People to empower themselves and to replicate this process in others.  In doing so we work towards eradicating absolute and generational poverty, its disempowerment and the effects on the body, the mind, and the heart.   

Our core values are built on the foundations of Christianity and Bible based living.  We do not consider our programmes and interventions as once off ‘donations’,  but rather view them as tools to build relationships that begins a journey of change and transformation, often yielding lasting change.

Through replication of this, our vision is to see entire families transformed who work towards becoming change agents in their own communities or their affinity groups.