Our story
It began where unemployment was total.
Izenzo started in 2017 in the Eastern Cape, in churches where unemployment wasn't a statistic — it was everyone. In some congregations, not a single person had work.
Siyabulela Nana and Ronald Begbie had spent years walking alongside impoverished communities, and they knew the deepest barrier wasn't only the absence of jobs — it was inertia, the quiet resignation that settles in when hope runs out. So they didn't arrive with a rescue plan. They equipped the churches to break that inertia themselves — building on what was already there: the people, the faith, and the programmes many had already started.
Slowly, something shifted. Young and old began to dream again — of fuller lives, of dignity restored, of work that could glorify God. And in communities where unemployment had been total, it began to fall — considerably. That seed became the Izenzo Job Club.
Founded in 2017 by Siyabulela Nana & Ronald Begbie
"They didn't import a rescue. They lit a fire the church could carry itself."
100%
unemployment in some of the first churches — before the work began.
Today those same communities are dreaming, working, and rising.
