INSTITUTIONALIZED CHILD CARE IN URBAN SOUTH AFRICA

These surroundings make 5Cees an exception. Its campus sits in between Hillbrow
and Berea, and consists of several units arranged around a central courtyard. The insular
design of the site often causes it to appear smaller than it really is. Its building spaces
consist of a few classrooms, a front office, a large garage, internal offices, a set of
apartment flats for visitors, a few utility rooms, living quarters for staff members, an
auditorium-like space, a library, a collection of multi-purpose rooms, and dormitory units
for the children based on gender and age. The premises, although fairly well maintained,
show the marks of aging. From asking various staff members about the origins of the
building, I determined that it was about a hundred years old, and had been previously
used as a hotel.
The Mission and Formation of 5Cees
Christ Church Christian Care Center was founded in the year 2000 by Rev. Mike
Sunker, known widely as Pastor Mike. Pastor Mike was then the pastor of Christ Church
Hillbrow, a predominantly black church within the Reformed Evangelical Anglican
denomination, only a short distance away from the center. As the pastor of a church at the
epicenter of the AIDS epidemic and rampant poverty in South Africa at the turn of the
millennium, he sensed the need to respond to such crises in a direct manner. The church
began operating a soup kitchen, but Pastor Mike felt that this effort was not holistic
enough. That endeavor evolved into the purchase of the current site which was quickly
converted into a home.
Formally, the mission statement of the center is as follows: “Seeking to
demonstrate the love and compassion of Jesus Christ in a practical way to the homeless,
61