Northcliff’s sustainable skills development wonderland

NORTHCLIFF – A local NGO takes skilled workers off the streets and gives them opportunities.

July 19, 2017

Roxy de Villiers 1 minute read

Trymore Munyika ready to cut up some tough wood with a chainsaw.

Not sure what to do with your old building equipment or do you have skills and a lot of free time on your hands? Why not help Tshepo Community Development help the community.

Tshepo is celebrating their 10 year anniversary. The community development project grew from being a soup kitchen and medical intervention initiative at the Northcliff Union Church pre-2007.

The project moved out of the church grounds to a vacant scouts hall opposite the road on Pendoring Road which led to a sustainable skills development centre and business.

“Yes, we have to respond to the immediate need but that doesn’t empower the person in need, so we try to equip them with skills to take care of the need themselves while also empowering others with the skills they have acquired,” Patrick Dlamini of Tshepo explained.

The project takes people off the street, specifically men at this stage, and gives them learning opportunities to get jobs either within or outside of Tshepo.

Basic gardening was one of the first skills the men learned and later they made their own organic compost. The vegetables were then used to subsidise the Tshepo feeding scheme and were sold to the public along with the compost to sustain the project.

From there, one project became another and all the way everything became interlinked and sustainable. The centre currently cuts and sells their own wood which they collect from a tree felling business they started. They also make wooden furniture (mostly outdoor), run a car wash and do gas refills. The latest of their projects, which is still in its infancy, is a small nursery that sells seedlings.

Peter Asa swings to cut wood gathered and sold by Tshepo.

Dlamini now plans to erect a skills development workshop for technical skills such as building, plumbing and welding. “What we really need is material. If people have excess material at their homes, they are more than welcome to drop it off so that we can empower people with it,” Dlamini said.