Julia Mbambo - an angel of Port Elizabeth's Walmer township

The sight of Julia Mbambo driving her big, black bakkie and waving to everyone in the street is a familiar one in Walmer township.

The community will tell you “Julia knows everything”.

The woman with the big heart runs soup kitchens, serves on the clinic committee, the police community forum and the ward committee.

She is the right-hand woman to Glenda Brunette, who runs the Walmer Angels NPO.

“I have been here for a very long time,” Mbambo, 45, said.

“This place has a lot of problems; my stories all end with the phrase ‘and then they passed away’.

“But at least I am here for many people when they need someone,” she said.

She and a group of other people had wanted to start a business and that was how they met Brunette.

“We wanted to do something for our families.”

It was a meeting of minds and since then the two have tackled many projects together.

“I think the biggest challenge girls face in this township is that there are no jobs,” Mbambo said.

“Also, they don’t have the right skills to get a job.

“A good job can take a woman somewhere.

“If everyone can work for yourself and your family then the crime in this place will stop,” she said.

“It makes me sad to see people coming back to our soup kitchen time and again.

“We wanted to offer soup to help them on their way to something better, but they get stuck.

“We want people to do things for themselves.”

Mbambo did study after matric and her last salaried job was in 2011.

That does not mean that she has ever stopped working.

“I failed grade 11 three times, but I said to myself: ‘Even if I fail 20 times, I will never give up’.

“I eventually passed matric,” she said.

“When I got out of school I took any job I could grab.

“I worked as a domestic worker, and I sold fruit and vegetables on the street.

“I lost my last salaried job in 2011, when the NGO I worked for closed.

“I am not a person to sit down and cry.

“I make things happen.” She has since kept her family going with stipends for her community work.

“The worst days we have in this township are when someone’s house has burnt down.

“It is not nice to see people in the deep pool of vulnerability,” she said.

“When people lose everything, I start working with all the energy I have to get them back on their feet,” she said.

Brunette said she did not know what she would do without Mbambo.

“I met Julia in 2004. “She is my right hand. “She has a heart for her community and she has a good soul,” Brunette said.