Cotlands turns 85 years old this year

Cotlands was founded in 1936, after a US Missionary nursing sister, Matron Dorothy Reese found an abandoned baby on her doorstep, at her home in Mayfair Johannesburg. She decided to keep the baby and care for it, and so Cotlands was born. She continued for a couple of years, taking care of abandoned babies.

In 1941, when she could no longer afford to maintain her home for the babies, the Sunday Times published her story. Funding poured in and she was able to open a new home in Kenilworth.

This institution opened the first paediatric AIDS Hospice in South Africa in 1996. After the decline in AIDS related deaths, the leading child care and development NGO, transformed into a more community focused service in 2012.

Their objective as on their website:

“ Our objective is to intervene directly within communities to try and assist even before children need institutional care. We strongly believe that this is a more proactive, beneficial and financially viable approach to the social crises which confronts us.”

Matron Reece passed away in 1967, and is buried in West Park cemetery, Johannesburg.

Read more: https://www.cotlands.org/celebrating-80-years-of-serving.../

Gravestone photograph by Derek Walker https://www.graves-at-eggsa.org/main.php?g2_itemId=2286131