June 4, 2021 – Recently, 160 trainees from the Lavender Hill community in South Africa’s Cape Flats completed an intensive Business & Entrepreneurship training conducted by the Whitaker Peace & Development Initiative (WPDI). The training – which was held over a six-week period – was specially designed to empower this cohort with the tools and skills they need to become entrepreneurs in their community, therefore helping spur sustainable economic development there.
South Africa’s Cape Flats area has long faced dauting challenges, including little economic development, a lack of educational opportunities for its inhabitants, and perpetual widespread conflict and violence. Many of these stems back to the days of the country’s Apartheid regime, a time from which Cape Flats has yet to recover. With South Africa’s unemployment rate for the area close to 30 percent, there is great need for new, innovative economic initiatives in Cape Flats and its communities, such as Lavender Hill.
Since 2019, WPDI has been training people living in Cape Flats in Business & Entrepreneurship to provide them concrete skills and improve their career prospects. This latest cohort from Lavender Hill – one of the Flat’s poorest and most conflict-ridden neighborhoods – focused specifically on the development of small businesses to address social needs in their community. Over the six-week course, participants learned how to identify gaps in the local market, design a business plan, and manage a small business’s finances, among other things. As many trainees had little to no businesses experience before the course, the training was a transformative experience for most of them, who expressed to us their strong interest in either starting their own businesses or pursuing further educational opportunities with WPDI to hone their skills even further. As Shannen, Lavender Hill’s Ward Counsellor declared at the course’s graduation ceremony, “Our community struggles with crime and violence, but with the training this group received from WPDI, I believe change is coming to Lavender Hill.”
With the six-week course now complete, WPDI will work with the 160 graduates to help them pursue next steps as budding entrepreneurs as they join the 320 others who have completed our Business & Entrepreneurship trainings this year. Their energy and passion is a promising sign of the efforts they are ready to undertake in order to succeed, and with WPDI’s next Business Plan Competition scheduled for July, we expect that these graduates will engage in our Business Bootcamp program and become fully-fledged entrepreneurs soon. We are confident that their determination will, in and of itself, set an example that will inspire others in communities throughout both Lavender Hill and the larger Cape Flats area.
