Power and water issues are making life at LIV Durban unsustainable.

That's why, this month we're raising R7million (£300,000) to start living off the grid!

Like many parts of South Africa, LIV Durban has been experiencing disruption to its power and water supply.

However, due to the village’s rural positioning, this disruption has been extremely severe. In 2023, the village experienced 66 days with prolonged outages of more than 8 hours, and went extended periods cut off from water supply.

It's impossible to capture all the effects of this in a short list, but to mention some of the impact this is having:

- Online school and exams are disrupted, this is having a huge impact on the children's education.

- The food in our foster Mum's fridges (and the medicine in the clinic fridge) is perishing. This is costly and makes delivering good care harder.

- The electric fence surrounding the village switches off.

Before a foot stepped across the land at LIV Durban, Tich had a vision in 1997 for a self-sustainable village. And though it's been hard, the utility problems we have been facing have caused us to revisit this vision and consider what a truly sustainable future would look like for the families at LIV Durban.

That has led us to the conclusion that it is time to start living off the grid - installing solar panels on the roof of the multi-purpose hall, and purifying the water from LIV Durban's abundant borehole.

Living off the grid will not only end all power and water disruption to the village. It will also bestow huge benefits on LIV Durban and the environment:

- R3.4m will be saved each year (£146,000/$195,000/C$262 000) (over a 20-year period). To put that in context, that saving could pay for either 6,800 counselling sessions, a year’s groceries for all 34 of LIV Durban’s foster families, or 211,180 litres of milk

- 6,440 tonnes of CO2 prevented from entering the atmosphere (over a 20 year period). According to Ecotree, that's the same amount of CO2 that would be captured by approximately 12,880 trees over the same period.

We are fundraising for the month of August only and trusting that through this campaign, we will raise everything we need to start living off the grid.

Thank you!

Contact information

Technical queries: werner.louwrens@liv-village.com

Donor care: nichole.louwrens@liv-village.com