Timeline

Drawing from his deeply personal experience of the power stories, Heartlines CEO Dr Garth Japhet’s debut book Like Water is for Fish is a testimony to the ways stories shape our lives, influence our choices and add colour to our world.

Click here to buy the book.

Covid-19 strikes! We launch Church in Action with the SA Council of Churches to create and disseminate Covid-related information. Much of our work, including our Fathers Matter campaign, is migrated online.

We undertake a large research project into fatherhood in South Africa and Uganda with funding from the Oak Foundation.

This work addressed one of the big three issues facing South Africa that we identified back in 2011: the first was money, the second was race and the third was family. Absent fathers is one of the most critical issues facing our country today, and we start raising funds to encourage men's active, positive presence in the family unit

Beyond the Riverappears in cinemas nationwide to acclaim. What's Your Story? is rolled out to churches and schools. We register a new company, Heartlines Consulting, to take our resources into the workplace.

What's Your Story? campaign launches, promoting personal storytelling as a tool to increase trust, understanding and empathy.

In order to fund Beyond the River and the national campaign around it, we raise money from the National Lotteries Commission, the Department of Trade and Industry (dti), the National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), KwaZulu-Natal Film Commission, M-Net, Discovery, Vodacom, ADreach, Lombard Insurance and the Templeton Religious Trust.

Craig Freimond and Robbie Thorpe are commissioned to write a script for a film about racial identity starring Trevor Noah; the project stalls.

Dusi Canoe Marathon story about Piers Cruickshanks and Siseko Ntondini spurs the writing of a new script: Beyond the River.

Nothing for Mahala is launched in cinemas followed by a five-year run on SABC, reaching 15m people. We undertake consumer financial education work for Nedbank across the country, which continues today.

We make Nothing for Mahala, a comedy feature film with funding from Nedbank, the SABC, the dti and the NFVF.

We start work on our next big campaign: Values & Money.

We launch ForGood, a platform to link volunteers to causes. “Heartlines comes to town” campaign brings together stakeholders in towns to tackle common issues.

Hopeville is broadcast on SABC2. The accompanying campaign encourages people to put their values into action by starting community projects, which spring up all over the country.

We work with Soul City on a Pepfar-related project that aligns our values to HIV-Aids prevention, and we launch a youth mentorship campaign.

Hopeville, a six-part mini-series with the SABC, is filmed in Waterval-Boven. Hopeville is about a man who wants to repair a swimming pool in a run-down community. 

Stories that Talk, our children’s stories about values, are translated into all South African languages and aired by the SABC's vernacular radio stations.

Our first campaign: Eight Weeks, Eight Values, One National Conversation. The award-winning films are shown on all three SABC channels, accompanied by radio, television talk shows and print articles, and are used in churches nationwide.

Our new name is confirmed as Heartlines (Heartlands was taken). We receive funding from the Templeton Foundation for our work.

Production begins on eight films focusing on the values of honesty, forgiveness, responsibility, self-control, second chances, compassion, acceptance and perseverance.

Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu is a patron of Heartlines. We bid farewell to Vivienne and hello to Buhle Dlamini and Jennifer Charlton. (Garth is still working full-time for Soul City at this point). First big funding proposal bears fruit: R18m from FNB.

Together with Curious Pictures (now Quizzical Pictures, and still our production partners), the MMP makes a pilot film called Grace. Garth uses it to raise funds for a series of films addressing different values.

World Vision comes through with funding and the first employee is appointed: Vivienne de Klerk. She sets up the not-for-profit Mass Media Project (MMP), with support from Soul City admin staff such as Helen Clark and Katia da Silva.

Garth gets a three-month fellowship to the United States and reaches out to various organisations to fund a new values-based project.

Garth starts speaking to church leaders about a new movement to encourage their congregants to close the values-action gap.

While on sabbatical from Soul City at All Nations Christian College in the United Kingdom, Garth has the idea that behaviour change in South Africa needs to come from a values shift.

Soul City TV series launches.

Dr Garth Japhet co-founds the Soul City Institute in Alexandra township.