top of page

Child Protection Organizations

Freak accident

During 2016, Pieter decided that the approach to support the project should be that no media can be used that will explain pain people experience… It must be about Enjoying Life…

Pieter was busy with the Enjoy Life phone planning phase. The objective was to use the Enjoy Life app to raise funds out of coffee sales.

He was busy working on the final sections of the software structure needed to support patients. The target at that stage was to raise approximately R13 million per month via the Enjoy Life app.

Pieter, Tanya and their daughter Megan was in Pretoria for the December period so that he and the IT director Carlo-Hein Versfeld could regularly meet and discuss the development structure. Pieter is responsible for the development plan and once that is finalized, the software is then developed according to the specified development plan.

 

This is important for readers to understand. Software development is such a complicated process. It takes successful companies months just to plan what they need to develop. The team developing must have a clear instruction that is well documented of what the final product must be able to do. You need to have a lot of knowledge about what hardware (servers) can do, what the limitations is, how much data storage you will need, the security requirements etc. If you hand in the incorrect development plan, the team is doomed for failure.  That is why the Homecare team were required to first do even small things, such as surveys before changes to the existing platforms can be done. We cannot change in future on infrastructure needed to support child protection organizations.

​       

The freak accident happened on 6 January 2017. It was a Friday morning and Pieter was excited, because he was busy wrapping up the software specifications. In his mind, the work would have been completed that night. They were planning on leaving for Paarl early Saturday morning. The Enjoy Life app would have gone into the market by April 2017!

Pieter, Tanya and Megan stayed at family in Pretoria for the December period while Pieter and Carlo-Hein had to work. It was raining in Pretoria on that morning. He took a break from his computer and he decided to make Megan a hot chocolate. Megan and Tanya were sleeping in a garden flat adjacent to the main house.

He went to the garden flat and fetched a glass that Megan took to the room. With the glass in his hand, he went back to the kitchen in the main house.

To reach the kitchen in the main house, you need to climb stairs. When Pieter climbed the stairs his feet suddenly slipped and he felt with the glass in his hand.

To protect his, face he instinctively blocked with his hand. The glass braked into pieces. The glass cut his thenar muscles in his hands and suddenly he lost the usage of his hand. Tanya rushed him to hospital so that they could operate on his hand.

That night, Pieter phoned Tanya and asked her to close the different programmes that was still running on his computer.

He also prayed to God and asked what he was missing? God knows the pressure that Pieter and the team is working under just to get things ready for the Enjoy Life app. Why this? Why now?

It was only in the hospital bed that Pieter realized why it happened. The screen he was working on was open at a planning section, exactly where he needed to include an important section of the software development. He would have closed that screen after bringing Megan her hot chocolate and this would have been excluded from the Enjoy Life app software.

The problem is, Pieter never wanted the public to donate… Pieter always said that he doesn’t want to beg for money to support his brother.

Pieter’s entire business plan was based on the fact that companies need to pay for services. If a client provides a service rating to a restaurant or fast-food business, the company must donate the gross profit of one drink to the patients…

It was only in hospital that Pieter realized the following… If the IT team add only one field extra into the software structure, only one place where the customer can type “I want to donate R10”, that the entire project could change into something big…

It is now possible for a restaurant guest to inform the waiter that he/she would like to donate a small amount to help bedridden patients while they are asking for their bills.

To understand, it is one field… but the software now needed a lot of additional development. We need to be able to manage that when a restaurant collects the small donation, that such funds will be received.

We need to inform the restaurant client about when we actually received the donation (the date that the funds are being paid over – a weekly process), what we did with the donation etc….

God need the platform so that thousands of companies can be collection points. People should, when they Enjoy Life, be able to donate small amounts. Foreigners should be able to donate small amounts…

Readers should know that Pieter’s business plan is not God’s business plan… The Holy Spirit will entice people to make small donations as long as we are transparent about what we do with their donations.

God took Pieter’s business plan from R13 million to R53 million per month…

This happened in January 2017 and God did not revealed to Pieter that the task is far from completed. If God had said to him that he must still develop additional software and that the project need another R80 million per month to help up to 10 000 employees…he would have stopped. At that stage it would have sound impossible to do.

God is amazing…  He will never reveal His entire plan to you in one stage. He knows that you need to take it block by block. You need to have patients… Sometimes, other things that you do not have control of must first get into place, before God can use you for what you were called upon.

 

It was only in November 2017 that we got involved with child protection branches. It was only in December 2017 that the Homecare team got involved with the Shoprite group….

 

It was only during the December 2017 and January till May 2018 period that Pieter was able to get the final development plans in place to support child protection organizations.

 

It is only now that Pieter knows that he and his team will be able to help God in many aspects… even with such a small thing as to invite people into churches while they visit other towns.

 

The most important thing though is that the Homecare team will be able to help child protection teams. There might be a need for child protection branches to increase their staff members (social workers). Nobody knows exactly what await us…. All we know for certain is that God knows… He will provide!

bottom of page