media releases - Visit to community based project 24 March 2010

Unisa has pleasure in inviting members of the media on a field trip to Mathopestat on 24 March.  Please see all details of the project below.  Please inform Ms Hellene Steenkamp at 011 4713689 or steenhe@unisa.ac.za if someone from your organization will attend.  Transport and catering are being arranged.

The Chief has to be supplied with the names & affiliations of the people attending. A delegation of about 80 to 100 delegates will be visiting Mathopestat that day.

Staff in the Department of Geography, together with members of the Greater Rustenburg Community Foundation is engaged in facilitating the improvement of community driven projects in the Mathopestat region.

On 24 March the Bafokeng Mother will be visiting Mathopestat with members of the Unisa team. The aim of the visit is to see how the various projects managed by the community have progressed and are benefiting the people.  Members of the media are invited to travel with a Unisa team.

Several weeks ago a team from the GRCF together with members of the Department of Geography at Unisa met with group leaders at Mathopestat.  They were following up on an Asset Based Community Driven (ABCD) workshop a few weeks earlier.  This innovative development paradigm is being disseminated around the world by the Coady International Institute in Canada and the GRCF is one of the first to adapt it to the South African context.

The premise of ABCD is that communities may have needs but they also have assets.  ABCD focuses on what the community has and how it can mobilize these existing assets to the betterment of the community as a whole.  The GRCF and other team members act only as a facilitator.  Al the project ideas come from the communities themselves and are therefore inherently much more sustainable.  As a result of pilot programs in the communities of Mathopestat and the Kgetleng region there have been many observable improvements in those regions and many projects, both social and economic have started up.

Please contact:

Hellene Steenkamp

Department of Geography

Tel 011 4713689

steenhe@unisa.ac.za