Maphela Maepa

With a passion for environmental health and sustainability, 27-year-old Maphela Maepa reaches out to a disadvantaged community center and primary school kids every year in July and monitors their progress throughout the year.

In addition to using her skills as an environmental health practitioner to develop the centers into compliant and habitable community centers, she regularly donates non-perishable foodstuffs.

The latest community center that she has worked with is the Pat Rico Community Care Center in Hammanskraal where she helped the owner to renovate and extend the center in compliance with the minimum standards. Pat Rico started as a community center with two rooms and a kitchen in a shack. The risk of food safety and hygiene was the main concern. With Maphela's help the center now has a compliant kitchen that meets all the basic requirements. An organic food garden was also started to boost the center with healthy fresh vegetables available on a daily basis to promote a healthy lifestyle and minimise the costs of buying vegetables weekly.

Read more about the Pat Rico Community Care Centre.