Week 4 at the SHAWCO training center

Photos from the training phase

Consultant's Perspective

Working with Siyaya - A Consultant’s Perspective

At the beginning of 2012 I joined the Siyaya Social Entrepreneurship Project and have enjoyed every single moment of the experience since! The entire project is smoothly operated and co-ordinated and it has provided me with the opportunity to make a significant difference in someone else’s life.

Since joining, not only have I gained a deep understanding and respect for the people whom I mentor, but in the process I have also formed new relationships with a diverse range of people from both the University of Cape Town and Khayelitsha.

Throughout the teaching process I have made a special connection with all the women whom I have mentored, and I honestly believe that the women have learned a great deal since the beginning of the year. Nomathemba in particular has found the training extremely useful and has taken a keen interest in the concepts being taught. She said that she wanted to be able to have a clothes business so that she could sell the clothes that her husband (Dumisane) had sewn. Nomathemba also expressed her delight at the curriculum content saying that she was learning something new every week.

I foresee an extremely bright future for Siyaya. The project has a well-structured organisational base and a dedicated leadership team consisting of a range of university students from different year groups and faculties, thereby facilitating an on-going sustainable business model.

I also believe that, within the near future, Siyaya will be able to incrementally increase the number of businesses that they are able to start-up each year, eventually diversifying their entrepreneurial structure to include other types of business. These sectors could include anything from food to housing, with the primary intent being to provide members of the community with additional sustainable businesses which address the inherent needs within townships such as Khayelitsha.

Matthew de Klerk

UCT Student

Siyaya Business Consultant

Siyaya and the Stormers!

Siyaya members met with  The Stormers  rugby captain Jean de Villiers on Thursday this week. This exciting event took place because of the willingness of the Stormers to endorse the Siyaya project. Patricia - one of the entrepreneurs taking part in the initiative - came along to help represent the organisation. The Cape Argus Newspaper was present to capture the event, which will be documented in tomorrow's newspaper. 

Siyaya is growing quickly, and it is support like this from the Stormers that helps galvanise the project to reach even greater heights.

Siyaya – A Practical Initiative Fighting Unemployment

Written by Brandon Finn

The Shawco centre in Khayelitsha is the home to an incredibly exciting new social entrepreneurship project run by UCT students. Every Friday approximately 30 residents from the township go to the centre to learn basic business and management skills. These people then gain access to second-hand clothing which they sell to make profit. This is all made possible by an initiative called Siyaya.

This project actively seeks out unemployed people in the community, and aims to equip them with the skills and resources necessary before starting up their businesses for them. Siyaya is so unique because it enables underprivileged members of the public to continue these businesses long after they have been trained.

Last week Friday I spoke to Magdalene Ishmael, an unemployed mother with a large family to support. She spoke about how Siyaya helps her because “it shows real-life methods to solve financial problems.” She also said that the project “helps me move forward towards a better life.”

This initiative strives to enable and empower members of Khayelitsha. It is so valuable because of its practical approach and tangible results. It is one of the very few initiatives in South Africa that applies practical methods in systematically and sustainably eradicating poverty. Siyaya provides a platform which assists people in moving beyond poverty, beyond unemployment and ultimately, towards a sustainable source of income. 

Siyaya Snapshot

Project Summary

Siyaya is an empowering social entrepreneurship project that strives to find, train and develop entrepreneurs in impoverished communities. The project starts up businesses and then equips candidates with comprehensive training which ensures sustainability. The ultimate goal for each Siyaya entrepreneur is for them to have full autonomy over their businesses once they are sustainable.

Vision

We want to see unemployed South Africans taking an active role in their communities by engaging in personal and social development through entrepreneurial pursuits.

Mission

We strive to teach critical business and money-management skills to unemployed Khayelitsha residents, and thereafter facilitate the start-up of their own individual retail businesses.

Our goal is to start 25 sustainable businesses in 2012.

We have designed the curriculum so that it:

·         Supports social engagement

·         Enhances tools for communication

·         Harnesses personal initiative

Success of the project will ultimately result in addressing socio-economic issues by:

·         Providing consistent income for the previously unemployed

·         Brightening the future of the entrepreneurs’ dependants

·         Encouraging the entrepreneurs to use their profits wisely and efficiently

Project Operations

Siyaya is a purely student run project, drawing on the skills of senior UCT commerce students, who take the role of consultants in training the entrepreneurs. Training sessions are held weekly at the Shawco Centre in Khayelitsha. 

Dell Innovation Challenge

We are proud to announce that out of over 1700 projects from over 100 countries around the globe, Siyaya has been selected as a semi-finalist in the Dell Social Innovation Challenge. This means that Siyaya has been placed in the top 200 projects and is competing for the main prizes, as well as 17 People's Choice Awards.   

Register and votes for Siyaya at http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dellchallenge.org%2Fprojects%2Fsiyaya&h=iAQGe6Ye2AQHUEvYl2NtQC0T2lD3QNLdVOpmifVm9uuUrCw

The more votes, the better Siyaya's chance at competing with the best in the world and bringing it back home to South Africa!

Siyaya- Moving Forward Together!

Introduction to Siyaya

Welcome to the Siyaya blog!

Siyaya is a social entrepreneurship project run by students from the University of Cape Town. Siyaya's vision is to train retail agents, who are sourced from Khayelitsha, Cape Town, to start and sustainably run their own businesses. Our team meets and consults the entrepreneurs in Khayelitsha on a weekly basis.


Businesses started are initially clothing retail businesses, with the potential of expanding to other areas as the respective businesses develop and grow.


Siyaya is a SHAWCO project and works closely with the NPO on solutions regarding social enterprise in Cape Town and the surrounding areas.