Millions of people around the world will be coming together to celebrate Global Entrepreneurship Week from 16 to 22 November.
Although there can be no denying that there are a great number of well-known international and national entrepreneurs, it seems fitting to acknowledge some of Grahamstown’s organisations that help to create entrepeneurs.
Millions of people around the world will be coming together to celebrate Global Entrepreneurship Week from 16 to 22 November.
Although there can be no denying that there are a great number of well-known international and national entrepreneurs, it seems fitting to acknowledge some of Grahamstown’s organisations that help to create entrepeneurs.
One of these is the Siyazama Multi-Purpose Community Centre. The centre consists of a pre-school, which started in 1994, and a self-help centre which has been running since 2007. The name Siyazama means together we will try.
The pre-school began in a local church and was born out of the vision of a nurse who, after visiting families in the local community, realised that there was a need for facilities which would provide for both the nutritional as well as the developmental needs of the local children.
The church was in poor condition and funding for the projection was almost non-existent. But persistence and dedication from the founders of the project paid off when requests for financial assistance from the National Development Agency were granted. Today the school has approximately 100 pupils who receive a basic education and two meals a day.
Siyazama has had a profound impact on the adult population as well. In 2007 the centre started a new project, the Siyazama Self-Help Centre. The purpose of this project is to provide local adults with the means to empower themselves through the development of skills which can be put to use to help lift them out of poverty.
The centre provides these potential entrepreneurs with a workspace in the form of roofed storage containers. The centre offers training in a variety of skills, including vegetable gardening, linocut printing, weaving, cooking and baking, beadwork and general craftwork which is made from any available resource -including the use of scrap wood for the manufacturing of educational toys and drinking glasses made from glass bottles.
The products which each individual makes are theirs to sell, with many of the mostly women entrepreneurs selling their products in the local community as street vendors in town and even at the National Arts Festival.
The Siyazama Multi-Purpose Community Centre is providing Grahamstown locals with the skills and the confidence necessary to empower themselves and become truly successful business people, and with the centre’s ethos being one of environmental caring and sustainability, this process of empowerment looks set to continue for quite some time into the future.
