Thursday 17 Dec

This morning we had some business at the bank. Always a pleasure. Right. After waiting 45 minutes in the queue your'e grateful for the comfy ( ish ) chairs, but can't help wishing they had more interesting articles on the walls. It took us the best part of 90 odd minutes to get out of there! Our next destination was the Sports,Arts dept. at the Ekurhuleni offices, to drop off gifts for the marketing departments we've been working with. We made a quick stop at the Marketing and Communications Department to do the same thing and then headed out to Johannesburg central to drop off packages at Anglo Zimele. Our meeting with Victors wife was cancelled so, once we had made all our deliveries, there wasn't much else we could do! Hanolet's taking tomorrow to finish up the profiles for the people we've succesfully enlisted this year. I'll be continuing with the blog from the 5 January 2010! Looking back over the past couple weeks at what we've achieved helps me put into perspective the work we've been doing! At the time it's frustrating and feels like you're wasting time and energy on some of these people, but it really is worth it in the end! After only a few short weeks I feel that we've accomplished alot..At one stage we thought we'd never get 50 disabled people with a craft, we did! The amount of positive feedback from people we've spoken too is awesome! Even my blog is slowly growing! It's all very exciting but there's way more to be done still, next year promises to be full of new challenges and new faces.. So until then.. Have a great Christmas and an even better New Year!!

Tuesday 15 Dec

The first thing i checked this morning was the weather! Not as bad as yesterday, but still overcast..after a quick cup of coffee it was straight to Ratanda to pick up the last of the forms from that area. We met with Eunice who owns a little shop in Ratanda selling vetkoek and such to the public,we spent some time chatting to her about her business ideas and giving her some new ones, all we had left to do in Ratanda after we'd taken her forms was to get the contact details of 50 disabled crafters. Thankfully we had a load of help finding them, so, while we waited for the contact sheet we relaxed, chatting about random stuff, like how artists from earlier years had lived.. a location can be surprisingly peaceful when you take time to notice. We got the contact sheet and met some of the disabled guys from their office, our list of disabled crafters ranged from paraplegic leather workers to blind people who can sew ( dangerous much?). On our way through to Norwood, the weather now warm and sunny, what had started out as a relaxing day quickly changed as we hit traffic. Joy. We waited several long, uncomfortable moments until we realised it was a roadblock further down! When we finally reached the police cars stationed on either side of the road (which took forever by the way) we where pulled over and asked for the relevant documents, licences etc. We where let go pretty easily though and they continued doing their thing. Finally we arrived at Spark Gallery , we'd given Gordon our catering duties for the day and he seemed to have had a bad time about it! 45 Minutes of trying to explain a lunch order to a clueless cashier can bring out the worst in a person. =) In the end though everyone was fed and the workshops last session for the year was going really well! we wrapped up after a chat with Gordon about next years classes, starting on the 5 Jan and said goodbye to the guys and girls that where there.. tomorrow is a public holiday (Yay!) but if theres anything worth writing about you'll be the first to know!

Monday 14 Dec

Another beautiful Monday in South Africa..it's raining of course. So far our morning has consisted of standing in a line at the bank to get change for our crafters in Norwood (Taxi Fare) then another line to get coffee (this one we didn't mind so much). Our next stop is Victor in Evaton, we're supposed to be meeting with his wife who owns a small restaurant-cum-spaza shop nextdoor to his business,just over half way to Evaton (about 45 minutes drive in this rain) we had to turn around as the roads into the town where flooding pretty badly, driving through a flooded township or being washed away would be a slight problem. She understood though and we re-scheduled for Thursday, hopefully the rain doesn't last! Due to the intensity of the rain (seriously, Noah's Ark stuff!) we where forced to drive around 70kmph all the way back towards Edenvale, putting us way behind schedule once more.We ended up only arriving in Norwood after 2 O'Clock to deliver the fares and lunches to our crafters. On top of that we where six people short at the workshop today! Which kinda sucks seeing as we're all going to alot of trouble to accomodate them,but it's understandable to a point, weather and time of year granted..Hopefully we'll have a full group tomorrow as its the last workshop session for the year. It looks like the rain may clear up though, so hopefully tomorrow is more productive!!

Thursday 10 Dec. 09

Todays roughly the same drill as yesterday, dropping off the tea and coffee at the Spark Gallery, then heading out to Heidelberg to collect application forms from our entrepreneurs. When we arrived in Ratanda there was a huge funeral gathering in the town hall, the music could be heard above all else. It’s way too hot today and I feel like I didn’t sleep enough, we handed some more papers out to new people and went through the process of explaining what we do and who we are, if it wasn’t for the slight breeze im sure I’d die from the heat! We spent some time chatting to the guys around us, its crazy when you get down to it, most of these people are living off R800-R1800 pm and still supporting a family! Hanolet took the new group through the motions, importance of filling out the forms correctly and honestly etc. We’ll be back there next week to collect the last few forms! We then went to meet the guys who are planning to start their community radio station, unfortunately they still haven’t competed their forms or gotten copies of their ID’s for us, we couldn’t hang around for nothing so we scheduled to meet them next week and stressed the importance of handing in those forms! Back in Norwood things are moving along well, we delivered everyones lunch on time and while they took a break we had a look at some of the better works with Gordon, some of them are really getting into their work, others..not so much! I took some pictures of their progress and we left them to it! Hopefully they keep up the good work and we’ll see them all again on Monday!

Wednesday 9 Dec

We’re on the coffee run this morning, delivering sugar & coffee to the Spark Gallery for our crafters. We had to meet up with Victor in Evaton at 10am though so once we’d dropped off the goods we hit the road armed with RedBull and Cigarettes, breakfast of champions. We where supposed to make a turn at Sharpeville today but due to us having to play caterer for our guys in Norwood we’ve had to rethink our day. By the time we got to Victor, it had started raining, I think it’s the Opels bad luck. Interesting fact about Evaton - it was founded in 1894, before which it was a farm named Wildebeesfontein that belonged to the Adams family ( no, not that Adams family ). The land was sold to the people with settlement rights and was not for government use. Later, however, former president Thabo Mbeki would create the Evaton Development Project to aide the people living there! Anyway..
Victor took us through his Oral presentation swiftly and we where able to cover some points with him concerning his profit margin and other aspects of his business such as mark ups in price and further marketing strategies. The meeting went well and he seems just as excited to have us working with him as we are! Such a cool guy! As soon as we’d wrapped up in Evaton it was back to Norwood to deliver our crafters lunches and taxi fare, we learnt that we will be doing the same thing tomorrow and next week Mon. & Tues. Whilst we where under the impressionthat itt was only yesterday and todays workshops until next year! ( Just when you think you know whats going on..) And were already a bit behind our schedule! If we wanna be done for Christmas we’d better start moving…

Tuesday 8 Dec

Before we head through to Norwood today we’re meeting with a few people from Ratanda. The first person to show was a sign writer who’s been running his own business since he matriculated in 1999, He does murals and glass décor as well as the signs on shop windows etc. He introduced us to a friend of his who does awesome weaving work as well as all kinds of different artworks such as wood carvings of peoples faces, so far we’re impressed with the turn out! We got a call from Sharon while we where busy with these guys, to say that all was going well at the workshop and only one person out of everyone couldn’t make it, great news! Before we knew it we where helping people fill out application forms, people seemed to crowd around our ‘office’ on the back of the bakkie! One lady is a caterer, the other wants to open a crèche and yet another can make chocolate moulds and wants to start a legit business! Family and friends of people participating where lining up to find out if they qualified for the mentorship programme and micro loans from Anglo America! We handed out all of the forms we had and told them to fill them out with profiles and business plans for Thursday, Poppy Mofokeng has proven to be our lucky charm as it was due to her word of mouth that most of these people even came to us today! Whilst Sharpeville remains my favourite community, Ratanda has given us the most positive feedback so far. Of all the forms handed out, if only 5 come back its been a good day! Our next meeting was with a group of guys from Heidelberg who aim to start up a Community radio station! They work from the town hall as a non profit organisation, a very exciting and promising bunch of people! There are just a few more papers we need from them before we can get them to the training, so we arranged to meet again on Thursday after we’ve been in Ratanda. With all that out the way for now, we could finally get through to Norwood! We arrived at the Spark Gallery just as things were rapping up unfortunately, however Gordon gave us positive feed back on the groups progress for the day, despite some of the crafters having difficulties with the equipment and such ( breaking blades and what not) things had gone well with the turn out being better than expected! We arranged to see him tomorrow again, it’s been decided that we’ll do two days of this workshop now and continue in January 2010! All in all it’s been an exciting and exhausting day! Tomorrow promises to be just as eventful..

Monday 7 Dec

I didn’t want to wake up this morning, after an awesome weekend away at the farm the idea of work was disturbing. This is now the third time I’m writing this blog entry, the first time the internet decided to not publish or save my work, the second time the laptop decided to just die on me. It must be a Monday thing. Oh well. The day started off gradually, I started by making a few calls to confirm the attendance of our crafters for tomorrows workshop in Norwood. Once that was done we decided to check out the venue, Spark Gallery. Stress. Nothing seems to have been done to accommodate our crafters! We couldn’t get hold of anyone from the building who we’d met on Thursday; all cell phones seem to be off on Mondays. What we’ve decided to do is use tomorrow’s workshop as a means to assess everyone’s level of skill and see who pitches up. In our minds, we’d like to only start the assessments tomorrow, then continue in January as the Vuvuzelas and Makarapas are only due in February. So, doing the entire workshop now instead of closer to the time could prove to be a pointless expense (You know how people tend to forget what they’ve learnt over a holiday? We wanna avoid that scenario) But we’ll wait and see what happens tomorrow and take it from there. We met with Gordon Froud (UJ Lecturer and renowned artist) to go over some ideas He’s come up with for the workshop, He’s got some really cool designs for the Vuvuzelas and Makarapas, I’m excited to see what we go with and how they turn out! All that’s left to do now is hold thumbs and hope everything goes smoothly tomorrow so we can get the ball rolling!!

Thursday 3 Dec

We got an early start this morning as we have alot of contacts to meet up with. Our first stop is in Ratanda, as we suspected, when we arrived there was no one around. We called our first contact to find out what was happening, she wasn't coming. typical. However Poppy Mofokeng was on her way, while we waited we made a few calls to a list of recommended participants for our Vuvuzela & Makarapa workshop, not as easy as it should be! The language barrier remains one of our biggest obstacles. We managed to secure 10 people from different municipalities. Still waiting for Poppy and 27 mins before we have to leave. We have a schedule to keep. We carried on with a few more calls. When she arrived (with 10 minutes to spare) we gave her a hand filling out her forms, but couldn't stay much longer. We'll be meeting with her next week to assess her bussiness in more detail. Our next mission was to find Spark Gallery in Norwood, what a mission!! Even with our handy little GPS we drove around,hot,impatient,lost for at least an hour! Tempers flaring, we even told our poor GPS what we thought of her! When we finally arrived at our destination we where met by Mthunzi (deputy official for Gauteng provincial government) and Sharon (Neosho) we had a look around the gallery spaces available, its more like an arty warehouse, the kind of space we'd like on a permanent basis but unfortunately it's being used by government for the carnival. Once we confirmed that we could use the gallery temporarily for our workshop, our meeting was pretty much over. After it was arranged that we'd all meet for lunch sometime in the future (the beers persuaded Mthunzi) myself and Hanolet went through to TG print in Spartan to collect keyrings and stickers for the products, not all the keyrings where finished and some that where completed weren't really what we'd hoped for,so, they agreed to re-do them at no cost! Then it was a quick drive to Kempton Park where i was picked up by Sharon and Jess and time to head home!! Traffic,extreme heat,getting lost and driving around all day has kinda killed my mood,can't wait to find my bed and crash! later..

Wednesday 2 Dec.

This morning sees us travelling through to Sharpeville, my favourite community so far. After a quick stop in Tembisa to check in with Maria on the progress of the beaded keyrings, we headed through to the old Sharpeville police station, we’re supposed to meet with Mary but just outside Sharpeville we received a call letting us know that they won’t be meeting with us. Just our luck. It’s getting to a point now where we start to wonder just how serious some of these people are, this is our job and we mostly enjoy it but driving around constantly and meeting with dead ends is beginning to get a bit too much. Another point is contacting these crafters! How difficult can it be?? We take down a number with a name “Are you sure this is your number?” “Yes”. Now, when we call, a husband or brother answers, working in the field or town, with no idea who you are or what you’re saying! Unfortunately it’s not just some of the crafters that seem to be uninterested, you wouldn’t believe how poor some of the responses are towards what we’re doing, whilst most municipalities are eager to help, others put us on hold or direct our calls to another official who then does the same thing!! Having a telephone to your ear for two hours and ending up where you left off sucks. Period. One good thing that’s come out of all the driving is that I get to listen to decent music as we’re using the Astra (the bakkie is suffering from a slow leak, and its radio suffers from Classic fm!). Anyway, despite our less than satisfying turn out (or should I say non-existent), we managed to locate 20 craftsmen for our Makarapa and Vuvuzela workshop! Next week Tuesday we start the workshop and we still need to negotiate prices with the caterer, tomorrows gonna be rough and I still gotta cook tonight!

Tuesday 1 Dec.

Hey there! This week we’re focusing on getting ahead of schedule, as from next week we’ll be starting with our training programme for the Vuvuzela & Makarapa creation project, which will take up a lot of our time. So! Today we’re following up on some of our entrepreneurs in Ratanda, we should be meeting with a few different groups to assess their businesses for our mentorship programme, starting early next year. After meeting with our first group of crafters (run by a disabled man who does awesome leather work!) we were introduced to a new group that missed our presentation, a co-operative business called Thobelanani (Respect) a small group of skilled men and woman who make school uniforms and such for the community, keep in mind that most of these organizations are held in 10x5m lock up garage style rooms! We sit and listen to their hopes of expansion and building a thriving business, hoping we can play a part in helping them achieve these goals. On the other hand, the other two groups were no-shows! This proved to be intensely frustrating because we’ve taken the time out of our busy day to offer them a helping hand and by not even pitching up, what does that show us!? We can’t help them if they won’t help themselves. Government has a mission to try alleviate poverty by 2010, so here we are to do our part…Unfortunately we can’t wait around all day. Phew! After that we drove through to Edenvale as Hanolet Uys and Sharon Reed of Neosho had to go view an expo, the drive back to Pretoria was insane! The rain had started pouring down out of nowhere, near flooding the roads! We were forced to drive under 70km/h on the highway, with our hazards on and wipers at full sweep! After today, I’m just glad to be home!

Thursday 26 Nov ‘09

This morning traffic was a nightmare! We did our best not to fall behind schedule on our way to meet Victor in Evaton, a producer of brick force (wire cable used in the construction of brick walls). He contacted us after our presentation on local economic development in Vereeniging (see Wed. 18 Nov) we’re handing him application forms and beginning to assess document his business growth. He’s very keen to enter our mentorship programme,according to him his biggest obstacles are entering the market and furthering his marketing possibilities. The meeting went really well, we toured his place of work and found that he has capable workforce and machinery to produce his product,We’re excited to introduce him into the programme! We then drove through the merciless traffic towards Eastgate, where we were to meet with Mthunzi,a senior ranking official of the Gauteng Provincial Government in the Arts, Culture and Heritage section and Gordon Froud, an internationally renowned artist,gallery owner and fine arts lecturer at the UJ (University of Johannesburg). The meeting started as soon as we where all seated, jumping straight into a Makarapa and Vuvuzela production project for next year. We discussed the pros and cons of upmarket designs against traditional ‘township curio’,the creation of prototypes,time consumption theories and the amount of products we hope to have created by February next year. The training was also discussed and it was decided we should start no later than the 8 December, completing the course by 15, beginning with the mentorship and production by the 4 January! Despite the long hours in traffic, today was great and alot was clarified and accomplished!

Wednesday 25 Nov ‘09

Our first stop today was in Kempton Park, picking up sample frames for the Sharpeville Exhibition Centres’ travelling exhibition, where they’ll be displaying photographs of the epic massacre(see previous blogs)
Once we’d collected the frame we drove through to Sharpeville (a drive that seems to take longer every time!) to view and measure further pictures to be used. We were supposed to meet with one of our talented craftsmen, Mshoban, but unfortunately he had business elsewhere, however we did get to speak with Mary (A well known community leader) and arranged meetings with local crafters for next week. Ex combatants (former MK members) where striking in Vanderbijlpark Civic Centre to have tenders of construction in Sedibeng (According to Sharpeville ‘street news’) so we avoided that area!! We then drove through to Tembisa to meet with Maria and Martha, two brilliant beaders of exceptional skill. We bargained with them over the keyring item price,much fun!! Tembisa,in comparison to other communities is not near half as well maintained , with people having to live in extreme conditions! Nevertheless,the skill of these beaders, dressmakers and crafters alike is intense! It’s inspiring to see them working so hard to create such beautiful work despite their living and working conditions!!

Tuesday 24 Nov '09

We're back through Heidelberg today,into the Ratanda location and as we arrive we're met by our group of potential artists and crafters,on time! So far so good!
However,the Ratanda Library refused to let us use their building as a meeting place,so we took to the streets instead!We explained the intricacies of sustaining a business,from the marketing aspects to goods manufacture.The attendees ranged from old to young,able to disabled,male to female.at one stage there seemed to be a problem that our workshop was presented in English,so we had to explain that its not a discriminatory thing,just that its the widely used language of business!!With 2010 so close they cant expect tourists from,say,Germany to understand Sotho or Xhosa!We then handed out roughly 30 application and assessment forms,it's now up to them to complete these applications so that we can further assess their businesses and take it from there!!
Once that was done and after we'd arranged to meet with a few of these entrepreneurs next Tuesday again,we followed David (Sedibeng municipality,Arts and Culture official) to the Lesedi Municipality to take part in a meeting with Solly Sibaya,the new Arts,Culture and Heritage official in Lesedi.We spoke about the forging of a partnership between our private sector and their arts department!Solly was recently transferred from Tourism, it should be interesting working with him! That's it for the day,tomorrow we're back in Sharpeville!

Thursday 19 Nov '09

This morning we're in Sharpeville,a place known mainly for the massacre that took place here on the 21 march 1976,where police opened fire on a gathering of unarmed protesters who sang songs and shouted political slogans. We made our way to the old police station which played a huge role in the 21 march tragedy. It's now being occupied by local craftsmen and artists as a 'place to create'. We took some time to speak to these guys and learn they're eager to expand, its awesome to see what they're doing! We scheduled a meeting for Wednesday where we'll go over their styles and swap ideas with the craftsmen, who are also amped to start recruiting new talents! Next up we were meeting with David (our Heidelberg contact) to discuss further work with the Heidelberg crafter's, we also discussed the use of the group of artists we met on Tuesday, unfortunately as they are still in school they're not eligible for loans. These are kinks that must be followed up and sorted out. Trying to get people into the programme can prove to be frustrating if the people aiding us cannot be reached or found! Like looking for a needle in a stack of needles. I was shocked to hear the amount of politics involved in our work,apparently from what i heard,some members of a crafts group aim to monopolize the situation by keeping other groups in the dark and making it a political thing when its really about upliftment and entrepreneurial progress..

But aside from that,everything seems to be moving along well,hopefully everything goes smoothly next Tuesday when we can meet and asses our new group of crafters!!

Wednesday 18 Nov. '09

Local Economic Department,Vereeniging.
This morning we're headed to Vereeniging to document a presentation programme held by the Sedibeng District Municipality.They'll be covering issues such as 'Finance beyond housing construction' and 'Taxation in business/clearance' with speakers from SARS and NURCHA
(National Urban Rural Construction Housing Agency)
The workshop opened with Mr. M. Kantso, manager of LED (Local Economic Department)
saying that as district officials,it is time to put words into action regarding business development.
Next up was Mr. M. Libaze of SARS, speaking about the registration of profit and non-profit businesses within 60 days.He also clarified some rumours about tax penalties,outstanding tax documents are to be fined at R250 per page, per month! After SARS, the CIBD projects manager, Mr. R. Raphiri spoke on the procedures of construction,development and the effects of these on our economy.Touching on methods of evaluation,grading criteria,application processes and validity of registration! After their lengthy speech the floor was opened for a Q&A session and i was glad to see i wasn't the only person who was lost completely!!
Next up was NURCHA presented by Ms Penny Mboyi whose entire presentation was in sotho,so most of her speech was lost on me,however i did understand that they offer affordable housing and new development products projects...
NSIC (National Small Industries Corporation) Fronted by a Mr. Rajesh Kumar,discussed incubation,promotion and development in small enterprise establishment,
finally,it was time for our presentation,where Hanolet from NEOSHO Discussed the Vuka Mentorship Programme,through Anglo America, women,youth and the disabled entrepreneurs of S.A will be chosen and arranged in groups of approximately 10 members based on skills and businesses,they will then be taught the necessary skills over a seven month period,three sessions per month! A further six months of intense training will assist in helping these entrepreneurs to find and build a client basis for them to render their services or sell their products to..
not as exciting as yesterdays line up but its all part and parcel of our jobs at NEOSHO.. i feel today went really well and we where heard and remembered by alot of individuals,which is all we needed to achieve!

Tuesday 17 nov. '09

My first day on the job and thanks to traffic,what was supposed to be an early start ended up with us only leaving Edenvale at 9 O'clock!! Thankfully the road to Heidelberg was quieter,
allowing us to stop for a much needed coffee,myself excited and eager to see what the day would bring. On entering Ratanda,the location just outside Heidelberg,you can see the development that has already taken place,on one side of the street are neat little RDP houses but on the other you will see what looks like the older,ramshackle mining dorms and makeshift tin shelters!
The contrast is crazy! Some houses falling apart whilst others are well maintained with the latest BMW parked in the driveway! We made our way to the local library and waited for our contact to arrive.All eyes on us as we waited by the car. You instantly know you're the outsider here,
unfortunately,after an hour of failed phonecalls our contact informed us he couldnt make it,however,we met a local group of young artists and a lady named Poppy Mofokeng.
Once we set up a meeting for next Tuesday,Poppy assured us she would have a larger group of local craftsmen for us to speak to! So all in all it was a productive day,we'll just have to wait until next week to see how productive!

Monday 16 nov. '09

Hey there! My name is Wesley,welcome to my blog!
What i aim to do here is shed a little light on life is S.A,
I'm gonna be documenting the everyday trials of a marketing company
called NEOSHO,I'll be keeping a journal on my experiences while working
with this company,we'll be travelling to rural areas in search of local craftsmen and designers!
NEOSHO's aim is to train these people by teaching them the relevant management skills
necessary in opening and running a successful small business.
I will be uploading new journal entries,photos and video footage as often as poissible
so you can follow our progress!! Feel free to get involved by adding your own comments
or queries!