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Blog / Vlog About Melissa Ordered Steps Footsteps Foundation ↗ Start Your Relocation →

Melissa Wright, founder of Melissa Today

Los Angeles → South Africa

Meet Melissa Wright

A Life Reimagined in South Africa.

Entrepreneur. Author. Educator. Speaker. Recording artist. Humanitarian. Mother. And now, a woman helping others navigate one of the biggest decisions of their lives: starting again somewhere new.

Founder • Melissa Today Creator • Ordered Steps President & CEO • Footsteps Foundation South Africa Resident

I Didn't Just Study Relocation.
I lived it.

I'm Melissa a native Californian, mother, entrepreneur, author, educator, public speaker and recording artist whose life took an extraordinary turn when I answered the call to relocate my family to South Africa.

In 2024, I left California and arrived in South Africa on Mother's Day. What began as my family's personal relocation became something much larger.

I had to learn the things relocation websites rarely explain: how to prepare financially, navigate housing, understand banking, evaluate visa pathways, establish a new daily life and integrate into an entirely different country.

That lived experience became the foundation of Melissa Today and eventually Ordered Steps a relocation ecosystem designed to help other individuals and families approach South Africa with greater preparation and clarity.

But something else happened after I arrived. South Africa stopped being simply the place where I had relocated. It became home and with that came a growing sense of responsibility to the communities around me.

2024

The Move

Melissa relocates her family from California to South Africa and begins building a new life on the continent.

Ordered Steps

The Blueprint Becomes a Community

Her lived relocation experience evolves into guidance, education and a community for others preparing to make the move.

12

Families Relocated

Real families begin turning relocation plans into life on the ground in South Africa.

Footsteps

The Mission Expands

Relocation evolves into responsibility, service and a commitment to meaningful community impact.

From Relocation to Responsibility

Then South Africa Changed the Assignment.

After more than a year of living in South Africa, I felt increasingly compelled to look beyond my own family's experience and toward the realities facing families living in extreme poverty.

I became particularly moved by the conditions within informal settlements & communities where families build lives beneath corrugated metal roof shacks while facing profound challenges involving housing, sanitation, opportunity and basic dignity.

I knew I didn't simply want to observe the problem. I wanted to become part of building solutions.

“What began as a relocation community became a community capable of serving.”

An existing nonprofit organization that was facing dissolution was entrusted into the hands of members connected through the Ordered Steps community and given new life and purpose.

Today, I serve as President & CEO of Footsteps Foundation, alongside an executive leadership body that includes members whose relationships were originally formed through Ordered Steps.

Our vision reaches beyond temporary relief. Footsteps exists to confront conditions of abject poverty and pursue sustainable solutions that can improve dignity, opportunity and quality of life including the enormous challenge of informal shack housing in South Africa.

The people who once came together to figure out how to move to South Africa are now becoming part of what we can contribute to South Africa.

“I came to South Africa looking for a new life. Somewhere along the way, I discovered a responsibility to help build a better one for others.”

Melissa Wright • Melissa Today

Featured Conversations

Hear the Story Beyond the Website.

Watch Melissa's conversations about relocating from the United States, building a life in South Africa and what she has learned from actually living the journey.

Webnation interviews Melissa Today about living in South Africa

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Featured Interview

THE STORY IS STILL BEING WRITTEN

This Was Never Just About Moving. It Was About Becoming.

Melissa Today exists to help people approach South Africa informed, prepared and intentional while proving that a new chapter of life can become the beginning of something much bigger than you originally imagined.