The Niall Mellon Township Trust an Irish charity, was established in 2002 with the aim of providing quality social housing for the impoverished communities in the townships of South Africa. We operate a year-round house building programme and are the largest charity provider of quality social housing in South Africa, having built 12,000 homes to-date.

Building through partnership with Volunteers, community and government has been our objective from the beginning. It is the enthusiasm of our Volunteers that creates awareness of our mission, generates funding and has helped to bring the issue of social housing to the fore of overseas development work. Yearly we bring Volunteers to South Africa to participate in week long “Building Blitzes” and to-date over 7,000 Irish and South African Volunteers have participated in our Building Blitz Programmes.

Community development is also an integral part of the work of the charity. We engage local people in the planning and design of their new communities, create employment and equip them with vital facilities for use by the entire community. So far, the charity has created employment for 2,000 people from the local townships and is heavily involved in training and up-skilling.

The charity has also built community halls, libraries, communal gardens and a school hall in partnership with the South African Archway Foundation. These facilities create a crucial space to build capacity within the communities, to create a learning environment and to kick start local enterprise initiatives to solve local problems. Community activities include; leadership training, home ownership workshops, environmental awareness and small business development programmes. We are currently building in 23 townships, building 1 in 3 new homes in Cape Town and 1 in 10 new homes in Gauteng.