Micro-business & Entrepreneur Activation - Phetoho

Thanks to the 57 donors who have supported our cause already we are well on our way to meeting our final target. With 7 days remaining before the Global Giving Challenge closes, we have £459 left to raise! We are so grateful for your belief in our cause, and the contribution that you have made to our success so far. 

This week we have completed the Phetoho stock take. This involved a lot of clothes counting - as the picture shows! It is a relief to see the stock room in a neat order now, ready for customers to come and select their clothing purchases. We have also been sourcing clothes donors (local corporate organisations and embassies) - who wish to collaborate with us long-term and have our collections boxes placed in their office spaces - with good success so far. 

Today I met with a Future Families careworker with an inspiring personal story as someone who has in the past battled with HIV and supported a son with severe mental disabilities. She finds dignity and satisfaction in her identity as a Future Families colleague, empowering her community, and gives her time and expertise generously to a large network of Future Families clients that benefit from her positive energy and wholehearted approach. 

She really believes in the power of "Phetoho" and tells me today that so often she sees women who are staying with an abusive husband as they feel they have no other choice, or agency to choose a different life. Phetoho builds people's confidence and creates economic opportunities that allow them to see an alternative future for themselves, which they can take control of and shape according to what they want to do with their life.

It was during her work and client visits that she met Miriam, who became our first customer/community entrepreneur. Miriam has established a successful micro-enterprise and is selling R1000s of clothes every month now; returning to Phetoho regularly to source her clothes stock. 

Your support is directly assisting our journey to a professionalised and scaled up Phetoho, to enable us to reach and empower more people to create their own future. 

Thank you for taking hands with us on this journey.

We are 16 days in to the Global Giving Gateway Challenge and I am delighted to report that we are ¼ of the way to our target of £2,000, thanks to your support. 

As the Gateway Challenge began we enlisted the volunteer support of 3 local students to assist with an overhaul and tidy of our stock room. The stock take will begin next week, to make sure we keep accurate accounts of our clothes assets. I am building a database of local businesses and embassies, for a sustainable supply of second hand clothes, and I will begin collections in the Johannesburg and Pretoria area next month to make sure that we have a continuous supply of stock for our community entrepreneurs to select from.

Next week we have a meeting with a Future Families colleague who runs the HIV support group in one of our communities. That group will be our pilot group for our training plans, and market research. This will help us to ensure that we plan a programme that will truly add value for community entrepreneurs wishing to take hands with us in this micro-business opportunity.

The profits that are sourced from this micro-business model will be recycled back into the Future Families original mission, 'to empower families to create their own future'. In our new Social Enterprise strategy we are working hard to re-position ourselves and scale up the income generating activities that our Enterprise Company runs, with the ultimate goal as financial self-sustainability. The shared value of a project such as Phetoho is important to us, as we seek to create empowerment environments for our communities; boost the local economies; and ultimately recycle the benefits from these activities back into our original services rendered in the community.

You can keep track of some of our recent activities in addition to our daily programmes via our Facebook page, where we often post photos and share stories.

Next month it is Global Refugee Day and we have activities planned around that day, and in its lead-up, to encourage awareness about the challenges that face refugees, and to provide them with a dignified forum in which to tell their individual story. We are partnering with UNHCR on a competition for story-telling.

We are grateful for the support of those who know and believe in our work, and invite you to share our excitement in this new strategic direction towards Social Enterprise. 

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