Missionvale began ten years ago when Sr. Ethel Normoyle moved to this area  ‘looking for the poor’, as she says. 

She used to visit people in their shacks every day, and gradually established a base for herself under a tree.  Here she set up a soup kitchen and began to help people develop their own resources to help themselves.  

Today Missionvale boasts a clinic which treats 170 patients a day for aliments and diseases such as TB and AIDS; a pre-school, a kitchen sourced with homegrown vegetables, a community center, and various projects responding to the needs of the people With no state funding, Ethel still manages to feed as many as 1, 000 people a day. Raising funds to build a church is community priority in a district in which poverty remains a problem. Two taps provide water for a community of hundreds in an area the Eastern Province Herald calls “dreadfully deprived” (24.12.1999).