Sibanye

Sibanye Economic Empowerment is a non-profit coalition of non-governmental and community-based organisations that produce various quality crafts in the Khayelitsha area, made by HIV positive infected and affected communities. In July 2004, Sibanye grew out of the City of Cape Town’s Urban Renewal Programme in response to a need for these community organisations to improve the marketing and sales of their crafts and, later, to also purchase raw materials in bulk. They manufacture to order for trade shows, tourism expos and corporate gifting in far larger numbers than individual crafters would be able to supply.
 
We were impressed not only by the enthusiasm and vision of the organisation’s leadership, but particularly with the positive ripple effect that a successful crafter has on his/her immediate community. Sibanye motivated for the funding of a business course, run by the South African Institute of Entrepreneurship (SAIE), for crafters to improve their understanding of basic business skills. We agreed to fund 24 crafters through this course at a cost of R52,500. We also commissioned the SAIE to implement a monitoring programme to track the efficacy and success of the training at an additional estimated cost of R10,000.

On the 20th February 2006, 18 crafters, from Khayelitsha, Nyanga, Westlake and Gugulethu, presented themselves at the Oliver Tambo Hall in Khayelitsha for the week-long training course. Most of the crafters worked with beads, with a few involved in sewing or mosaic.

It was gratifying to see that all 18 crafters were present throughout the course considering that during that time they were not earning (most of them are sole breadwinners). The Solstice Foundation would like to commend their commitment to the course and therefore to improving their lives through empowerment and learning, and would like to congratulate all 18 crafters for successfully completing the course.

For the purposes of updating this information for our website , we have not been able to make contact with this organisation. It appears that it has closed. Hopefully its success led to the crafters being able to ‘go it alone’ with their businesses – or maybe it merged with another similar organisation.