Headquarters of not-for-profit Heart for Africa moving to Cape

It just makes sense to Jimmy Wilferth that Heart for Africa, a Christian not-for-profit organization trying to improve thousands of lives in the African country of Swaziland, will move its national headquarters to Cape Girardeau from Atlanta this spring.

"There's just not many places like Cape in this whole country," said Wilferth, a Cape Girardeau native serving as the organization's executive director. Wilferth will soon become the organization's U.S. president of operations.

"The heart of the people [in Cape Girardeau], the heart to serve, the heart to help, the heart to do it right, is not found other places like it is here," he said.

Around 120 people from the area have gone to Swaziland to aid with a 2,500-acre land development project since the buzz about Heart for Africa began locally around four years ago, said Raelenna Ferguson, a volunteer who coordinates trips for missionaries. For the past two years, she has directed an annual fundraiser in Cape Girardeau that raised $200,000 overall for the organization.

Heart for Africa was founded in 2006. In addition to developing a self-sustaining farm in Swaziland called Project Canaan, the organization supports orphanages and religious education through partnerships with Swaziland churches and children's homes. Since its beginning, the organization has sent more than 5,000 people on mission trips to Africa.

Pastors of two Cape Girardeau churches, Lynwood Baptist Church and La Croix United Methodist Church, sit on the organization's board. Many of the locals who have traveled to Africa attend those two churches. Med Assets, a medical supply and service company based in Cape Girardeau, is also heavily involved with the organization. Its employees have traveled to Swaziland and been involved in fundraising.

Med Assets has donated space for the new national offices in the Lorimont Building at 276 S. Mount Auburn Road, and the Atlanta offices will close Feb. 29, Wilferth said.

The move is in part due to Wilferth's new position as the organization's national president but also comes in recognition of Cape Girardeau being a major hub of Heart for Africa supporters, he said.

Wilferth became involved with the organization when his wife and daughter traveled to Swaziland with the organization a few years ago. He visited last summer. Until December, Wilferth spent the past five years as vice president of national operations for Men at the Cross, a Branson, Mo.-based ministry focused on men's discipleship.

Ian and Jeanine Maxwell, founders of Heart for Africa, will move permanently to Swaziland at the end of May to live on the farm and oversee the entire operation of the organization, which is why a new national president is required, Wilferth said.

"Ideally, it needs to come here," said Ferguson of the organization's move to Cape Girardeau. Ferguson said she thinks there will now be a chance for a large growth in local involvement with the organization, but so far, she said, she is amazed at the effect local volunteers and missionaries have had in Swaziland, which has the highest incidence of HIV per capita in the world and where around 75 percent of people live off subsistence farming for less than $1.25 per day.

In a partnership with La Croix in 2011, 260,000 meals were sent to Swaziland from the church-hosted event in Cape Girardeau called Feed My Starving Children. Money raised in Cape Girardeau has helped to finance construction of a medical clinic and a home for infants in Swaziland, Ferguson said.

Wilferth is directing all national operations, staff, fundraising, recruiting of missionaries, speaking engagements and plans for the ministry. He will also oversee planning of this year's Celebrate Hope, which will raise money for water distribution in Swaziland. The fundraiser will be held March 10 at The Venue in Cape Girardeau.

Missionaries with the organization most often visit Swaziland in the summer for around 10 days and raise their own funding for the trips, which cost around $3,800 per person, according to Ferguson, and include airfare and other necessities.

More information for volunteers can be found online at www.heartforafrica.org.

eragan@semissourian.com

388-3627

Pertinent address:

276 S. Mount Auburn Road, Cape Girardeau, MO