A Bellville couple’s non-profit company runs a second-hand clothing store, a support centre for prospective parents in crisis and a project to save abandoned babies.
Eloise and Johan Pretorius are doing their bit to help the community through the Inceba Projects, which has a second-hand clothing store, a pregnancy help centre and a baby saver programme.
Ms Pretorius said: “The Inceba Clothing Shop is a department of Inceba Projects NPC, which was registered as a non-profit in 2017. We launched with a market day in June 2018 and invited other vendors to take part as well, the only thing that Inceba could raise funds was through clothing, considering we received many clothing donations from our church community at that time.”
Ms Pretorius added that there was a continuous outflow of clothes being donated and the organisation asked for permission from their donors to sell some of the excess items from the Quarry Street premises on Fridays.
“The clothing shop was relaunched in a renovated building on the same premises on August 3 in 2019 and soon we realised we need to be open on other days as well. So then we started to open on Mondays and Tuesdays between 10am and 1pm and Fridays from 10am till 3pm. The items in the shop are excellent quality clothing and vary from male and female, children sizes, shoes, books, crockery and linen. We also have a full-time volunteer that serves as a store manager while we also have part-time sales associates.”
Ms Pretorius added that the store has regular clients from other communities with high and low income.
Selling clothes though is not the only way Inceba is helping the community as they also help people in crisis pregnancy situations by offering an additional service from the Quarry Street location, which was launched in September last year.
Inceba also started helping prospective parents in crisis.
Prior to the pregnancy centre, the organisation had previously launched a baby saver programme in October 2018, where they provide guidance and counselling for mothers who feel that harsh abandonment of their children is their only option.
“It is a safe place where a desperate mother can leave her newborn instead of aborting him/her, or abandoning him/ her in a rubbish bin, toilet or drain. When the mother visits our facility, we give them a letter explaining to her that she has a 90 day period to contact us if she feels she has made a mistake. We had our first abandoned baby in a hospital last October.
Unfortunately she was born premature and her mother abandoned her at birth. She survived for seven days and we held a memorial for her. At the beginning of last November, we had our first baby in the saver and he was healthy and beautiful. He is with his adoptive parents and is doing very well.”
The shop is at 9 Quarry Street, opposite Nobel Park and is next to the Apostolic Faith Mission church in Bellville. Contact Inceba at 083 992 2363 or info@inceba.com. There is also a Facebook page: Inceba Projects NPC and Inceba Clothing Shop.