Ordinary person, extraordinary deed – One Future Foundation
In a regular feature highlighting ordinary people doing extraordinary deeds, Terence Pillay speaks to Marc Maurel from the One Future Foundation.
LISTEN: Terence Pillay speaks to Marc Maurel from the One Future Foundation.
Marc Maurel wears a number of hats. He’s a husband, father of five, barber, surfer, and entertainer, but no matter which hat you see him wearing, everyone who knows him knows that Marc is about loving people. He is more recently known for his non-profit organisation, the One Future Foundation, a collaboration of like-minded people who believe together we can really change our city and country by transforming people.
And he’s started with the homeless and prostitutes of Durban.
Durban has a massive homeless issue and street-sex worker problem. While there are shelters for them, they have come under fire from eThekwini Municipality’s Safer Cities for being too commercialised and focussing on just collecting money. Apparently they only allow people to stay there at night and they’re chased away in the morning. Some of these shelters don’t even have showers and the living conditions are not great.
This means that there is no human element to dealing with these homeless people, who are in this position for a number of reasons.
So Marc decided to form an NPO to address these issues. He engages a number of organisations to provide food, sometimes shelter, job opportunities, and skills training to these people who have fallen on hard times.
One Future Foundation also works with street-sex workers, providing them with care packages that include contraception and feminine hygiene products. Rather than judgement, the organisation is looking at the person and not the circumstance, thereby trying to uplift them and instill some of their lost self-esteem and dignity.
And he’s started with the homeless and prostitutes of Durban.
Durban has a massive homeless issue and street-sex worker problem. While there are shelters for them, they have come under fire from eThekwini Municipality’s Safer Cities for being too commercialised and focussing on just collecting money. Apparently they only allow people to stay there at night and they’re chased away in the morning. Some of these shelters don’t even have showers and the living conditions are not great.
This means that there is no human element to dealing with these homeless people, who are in this position for a number of reasons.
So Marc decided to form an NPO to address these issues. He engages a number of organisations to provide food, sometimes shelter, job opportunities, and skills training to these people who have fallen on hard times.
One Future Foundation also works with street-sex workers, providing them with care packages that include contraception and feminine hygiene products. Rather than judgement, the organisation is looking at the person and not the circumstance, thereby trying to uplift them and instill some of their lost self-esteem and dignity.
If you know of an ordinary person doing an extraordinary thing, you can email Terence Pillay at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter: @terencepillay1 and engage with him there.