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..