Tag: South Africa

March 4, 2019

Skateistan

How charity Skateistan is empowering children through skateboarding.

When Oliver Percovich moved from Australia to Kabul in 2007 he had no idea how much the city would change his life.

In a bid to explore his new surroundings Oliver would skateboard around the city centre. It wasn’t long until the street-working kids started to follow him around asking for rides. That was the lightbulb moment.

In 2008, Oliver founded Skateistan, a grassroots ‘Sport for Development’ project in Kabul. Since then it has won numerous awards and launched around the world. Alice Murray caught up with Oliver to find out more.

Where did the idea for your company come from?
The young girls working on the streets of Kabul. I wanted to connect them to the rest of the world through skateboarding.

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August 19, 2018

Khayelitsha Bin Clean Project

Social enterprise Bin cleaners bring Hollywood to Khayelitsha, South Africa.

As an events marketing student at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT), 21-year-old Buhle Sithela started his bin cleaning business as part of a practical assignment. It soon blossomed into a full-time community service.

“I wanted to do something that would benefit the community, so I set up this event where people in my (area) could bring their bins and me and my friends would wash them for a small fee,” Sithela told Amaphiko social enterprise website.

The Khayelitsha Bin Clean Project is based in Harare, Khayelitsha. Every Friday, Sithela and his friends clean more than 30 bins, charging R50 per bin. “Initially,” says Sithela, “we didn’t have that many bins. We started with five bins, but things picked up so quickly.”

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July 10, 2018

Solar Turtle

Solar Turtle’s power plan for rural women.

After recently winning the Nation Builder Social Innovation Challenge, Cape Town based renewable energy start-up Solar Turtle wants to empower women entrepreneurs in rural communities by creating a viable micro-franchising model based on the scalability of renewable energy.

Solar Turtle is the brainchild of CEO Lungelwa Tyali, CTO James van der Walt, CSO Charlene Barnes and sales director Ursula Juluis.

Established in 2016, the start-up is a social enterprise that designs and manufactures solar-powered energy hubs or kiosks that can be used by entrepreneurs to provide a source of energy to community members in rural and off-grid areas.

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March 19, 2018

DICE

New support for creative and social enterprises in the UK and overseas.

The British Council is launching an ambitious programme called Developing Inclusive and Creative Economies (DICE) that will support creative and social entrepreneurship in the UK and five key emerging economies: Brazil, Egypt, Indonesia, Pakistan, and South Africa.

Announced at the Good Deals and Beyond Good Business Conference today, DICE will take an innovative, cross-sectoral approach that draws on the UK’s experience and expertise in the creative and social economies to promote inclusive development and support progress on the Sustainable Development Goals.

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December 17, 2017

Lillian Cingo

Aboard the miracle train.

When Lillian Cingo retired from managing the neurosurgical unit at London’s Royal Free Hospital, she had every reason to put her feet up. 

Her back was wrecked from over three decades of nursing, during which she had reached the top of her profession, winning awards in both her native South Africa and in Britain. The award-winning nurse who took healthcare to rural South Africa tells Mary Lean about her journey.

Instead, she chose to spend 13 years living on a train, sleeping in a bed so narrow that she had to wake up every time she turned over. Millions of South Africans have reason to be grateful for that decision. The train was South Africa’s Phelophepa (‘good clean health’) train, which set out in 1994, with Lillian as its manager, to bring health services to remote rural communities. Since then Phelophepa (which now runs two trains) has reached over 5.5 million people with medical, dental and eye care and counselling. It has given 20,000 student doctors an insight into rural needs, and every year trains nearly 600 volunteer health workers, chosen by their communities.

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