Full Circle: Former TLC Children Return to Give Back at Embrace Village

By TLC

Two young women, Judith and Siya, who began their lives at TLC Children’s Home in

Johannesburg before being adopted separately to Germany as babies, have returned to

South Africa for several months to volunteer at Embrace Village - a community initiative

founded by TLC’s Managing Director, Pippa Jarvis.

Judith, staying for three months, and Siya, for six, are working alongside the Embrace team

to run sports and learning activities for mothers and children in the village. Their projects

include swimming lessons and playful learning games designed to help mothers build

healthy relationships with their children while passing on vital skills for growth and

development.

For both young women, this visit is deeply personal - a chance to reconnect with their

beginnings while investing their energy and compassion into helping others thrive. “It’s a

way of touching our own origin stories,” they shared, “and putting something back into the

place that gave us our start.”

Pippa Jarvis the Managing Director of TLC Children’s Home says “We ran for 30 years, caring for more than 900 children, many of whom found families across the world. It is an

enormous personal privilege to be reunited with our babies after so many years and see the

love being rippled into the world in such a powerful way.”

In 2024 TLC Children’s home remodelled into an Early Childhood Development Centre for

vulnerable children and expanded by forming Embrace Village, a sister initiative, continuing

the legacy by creating pathways for healing, family preservation, and community

empowerment in a more sustainable way.

Judith and Siya’s return is a powerful reminder of how love - when nurtured and shared -

has a way of coming full circle.