About Us
What We Do | About Us | Accountability.
What We Do
WHO WE SERVE
Become Family walks alongside two groups of people whose lives have been shaped by conflict and hardship, most often in Congo, where decades of instability have displaced families, separated children from parents, and stripped communities of the safety they once knew.
Children
We serve children who have lost a parent, been separated from family, or are growing up in households where survival is a daily question. Through our sponsorship program, we provide them with what every child needs to grow: food, school fees, medical care, and the steady presence of adults who know their names and believe in their future.
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Mothers
We serve single mothers carrying the weight of their families alone, many of them widowed or displaced by conflict, all of them resourceful and determined. Through our small business empowerment program, we walk with them as they build sustainable livelihoods.
About Us
Our Vision
A transformed community where children, women and youth affected by conflict and hardship can grow, heal, and flourish.
Our Purpose
We believe no child, woman, or young person should have to walk alone. Become Family exists to be a family to those whom conflict and hardship have left without one.
Our Mission
To restore dignity, opportunity, and hope to vulnerable children and women, one life and one family at a time, through child sponsorship, small business empowerment, and emergency support in times of crisis.
Our Values
Family
We believe belonging is a need as real as food or shelter. We don't run programs for people, we walk alongside them as family. Every child sponsored, every mother supported, every family served is part of ours.
Dignity
Hardship does not define a person. We refuse the language of pity. We see strength, agency, and possibility in every life we serve, and we partner with people as authors of their own next chapter, not recipients of our help.
Faithfulness
We honor the trust placed in us by those we serve and those who give. We do what we say we will do. We show up when it's hard. We stay when others leave. Faithfulness is the small, unglamorous discipline that holds everything else together.
Hope
We work in places where hope is hard to hold onto. We choose to hold it anyway, not as wishful thinking, but as the conviction that healing, growth, and flourishing are possible. We let that conviction shape what we do, even when the scale of the need is greater than our reach.
Justice
The hardship our families face is rarely accidental. We do not only respond to need; we stand against the conditions that create it. We speak for those who are unheard, advocate for those who are overlooked, and refuse to treat injustice as inevitable.
Courage
The places we serve are not always safe, and the work is not always easy. We choose to be present anyway. Courage, for us, is not the absence of fear; it is the decision to keep walking with our families when others have walked away.
Stewardship
Every dollar, every hour, every relationship is held in trust. We are careful with resources, honest about outcomes, and accountable to the people we serve and the partners who walk with us. We measure success not by what we raise, but by what changes in the lives of those we serve.
Our Board
Mike Matumaini, Chair
Christelle Matumaini, Secretary
Derek Welsh
Michael Harris
Ashley Howland
Grant Harvey
Accountability and governance
Become Family is a registered Australian charity, incorporated as an association and registered with the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission. Our Board takes its responsibilities seriously: we align with the ACNC Governance Standards, manage conflicts of interest transparently, prioritise the safety of the children and families we serve, and steward every dollar with care. For a fuller account of our risk oversight, child safeguarding, privacy practices, and financial stewardship, see our Accountability page.
Risk Management and Compliance
Become Family Incorporated is committed to operating with the integrity that the trust placed in us demands. Our Board takes its governance responsibilities seriously and works to ensure the organisation operates in full alignment with the ACNC Governance Standards.
Compliance with the ACNC Governance Standards
As a registered charity, Become Family operates under the ACNC's six Governance Standards, which set the expectations for how charities are accountable, run responsibly, and managed by suitable people. Our Board considers these Standards in its decisions and reviews our compliance with them as part of our regular Board cycle.
Risk oversight
The Board reviews the principal risks facing the organisation on an ongoing basis, with particular attention to the risks specific to working in eastern Congo, including the safety of our team on the ground, the security of beneficiaries and their stories, and the operational uncertainty that comes with working in conflict-affected regions. We do not pretend that all risks can be eliminated. Our approach is to know them, name them, and reduce them where we responsibly can.
Conflicts of interest
Several of our Board members and volunteers share family relationships, which is common in small charities led by people who care deeply about a shared cause. Our Board manages this transparently. We maintain a Conflicts of Interest register, require declarations from any member whose personal interest could intersect with a Board decision, and follow our Rules of Association in managing related-party matters. Where conflicts arise, the affected member steps out of the relevant decision.
Child safety
The children entrusted to our sponsorship program are at the heart of our work, and their safety is a priority that informs how we operate. Our verification process, by which every child welcomed into the program is confirmed by a matron or patron, a school leader, and a spiritual leader in their community, is part of how we protect both the integrity of our sponsorships and the well-being of the children we serve. The Board is committed to continuing to strengthen our child safeguarding practices as the program grows.
Privacy and the stories we tell
The families we serve trust us with deeply personal stories. We treat that trust as sacred. Beneficiary stories shared publicly are shared with consent, and where consent is uncertain, we adjust names and details to protect those we serve. We do not believe that the power of a story is worth more than the dignity of the person at its centre.
Financial stewardship
Our finances are managed with care and transparency, supported by professional pro bono accounting from Erastus El Roi Advisory. As a small charity, we are not required to lodge audited financial statements with the ACNC, but our Board reviews financial reports regularly and ensures that every dollar received is accounted for and applied to its intended purpose.
