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IMPACT
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Restoring dignity |
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Schools programmes Since beginning our schools entrepreneur-ship work in Murraysburg, about 90 children between 11 and 13 years have experienced a taste of business. Each year half a class is involved in the printing and selling of T-shirts to this small town. They cover business concepts and goals alongside the practical considerations of printing and ironing. Stock control, pricing and selling and caring for one's customers comes next. Finally, bookkeeping, banking and loan repayments are struggled with during what typically turns out to be a 2 — 3 hours per month input from their teachers. Many of these children are ragged and shoeless as they come from one of the rural `poverty pockets` for which the relatively affluent Western Cape is infamous. Their families typically live on state grants and amongst whom alcoholism and violence are the norm. A lack of positive role models in their local communities encourages the drift towards the cities and the temptations of crime and drugs. The schools training was set up to encourage a positive response of "I did it at school, so I can do it again." |
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Warm Vetkoek |
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Attie is 14 years old, and with two friends gets up early each Saturday morning to make vetkoek — a deliciously sweet and greasy type of doughnut. In the small Karoo town, Saturday is when farm workers come to town to spend their pay. Attie has brought together cooking skills learnt from his mother and the business skills picked up at school. They costed their product, found out what everyone else charges, and decided a suitable price. Now they carry their pot of `goodies' to the main shopping area of town and set up shop on the pavement. A rough sign advertises their product and the warm `vetkoeke' are soon all sold. After setting aside money for raw materials, profits are split and the savings grow. Attie's goal is to buy a decent pair of trainers to replace the hand-me-down shoes from his elder brother. His unemployed father could not imagine himself doing such a thing. |
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Working off debt Outdated and patriarchal leadership stifles the creativity and motivation of community members and this lack of understanding, which only brings conflict and collapse eventually, is a serious hindrance to development. In such a vast and sparsely-populated region, the collapse of one group can mean the collapse of development within a town. Community workers are interested in encouraging local people in debt to the community's shop (a community initiative) to work off what they owe through time spent in the vegetable gardens. Long-term debt is a broken link in the complex chain which holds society together, and restoring people's dignity would surely accompany this removal of debt. |
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