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The Richmond Community Development Foundation

"The Richmond Community Foundation" is a non-profit organisation established to alleviate the extreme poverty of the community in Richmond in the Karoo. Richmond has no industry to speak of as the town is essentially a central point surrounded by vast, scarcely populated sheep farms, with the local population unskilled and unemployable, who barely survive on Government social grants.

To alleviate this extreme poverty the foundation has to first empower the community by teaching them usable skills.  The foundation has to create an industry and a market for the articles that are manufactured so as to generate a sustainable income for the community of Richmond.

The Richmond Community Development Foundation is a registeredSection 21 Company (incorporated not for gain)
CIPRO Registration Number: 2008/00/1433/08
The Foundation is also registered with the dept. of Social Development as a Non-Profit Organisation
NPO Registration number: 071-792

Should you wish to make a financial contribution, please contact Dr. Peter Baker

RCDF would like to thank The Nama Karoo Foundation
for the following:

  

A Donation of funds to employ one of the local community on a full-time basis to kick-start the Food gardens project. The first job has been created, thank you NKF.

The will assist us by donating the seeds, and we will be able to plant approximately half an acre of "Kanker Bossie" The proven best natural remedy for treating AIDS patients, and ofcourse half a dozen other ailments, it is a wild plant indigenous to the Karoo.


They have also donated 3 x 4 year-old 1.7m indigenous trees (witkarees- a protected species of the N Cape, similar to the regular Rhus lancea known as karees but they are deciduous and have a tasty fruit). 

The Foundation also requires water hoses for irrigation, cement to build irrigation channels, a new windmill, and repairs to our irrigation dam.

The Foundation would also like to thank Alison Richardson for her generous donation of vegetable seeds.

The food gardens project is ran successfully during 2010, yet due to not receiving either sufficient capital or funds for continued operation, the food gardens project has been terminated, andwe still don't have a single gardening tool. Would you like to contribute?

The foundation has acquired the services of highly creative and experienced skills trainers and project managers to train the community, which facilitators have more than ten years of experience in community development and the transfer of skills. The aim is to teach members of the local community the art of clothing and soft furnishings production, the art of ceramics and pottery and the art of furniture restoration and carpentry. At a later stage the art of antique book restoration will be taught and a book binding division will be added to the skills base.

The foundation has also acquired 1,5 acres of land with enough buildings for the community development project but must still equip the training facility with machinery and equipment. Once the training has begun, The foundation will create a market for the items produced by acquiring the services of a professional sales and marketing specialist to market the products in major centres around the country with the ultimate goal of entering the export market, and selling the products in Europe and the United States of America. For any community development project to be successful, sales and marketing are a key factor and this is a priority for The foundation to be able to establish an industry in the town.

Unless funding can be acquired, the Foundation will have no option but to close down.

The main focus of the foundation is to empower the men and the women of the Richmond community through skills training. The secondary yet prime focus is to establish markets for the products and to sell the products, thus affording the community the opportunity to gain practical work experience. The tertiary objective of The foundation is to assist the skilled and experienced trainees to establish community owned co-operatives which The foundation will market, thus creating sustainable employment, and sustainable micro-industries in the town of Richmond.

Richmond in the Karoo has already been established as South Africa's first and only Book Town and with the advent of the foundation it will also become a cottage industry town. Richmond is situated along the N1 highway approximately halfway between Cape Town and Johannesburg, and the marketing efforts will concentrate on making it a must-stop-over destination where high quality products can be purchased. It is also ideally placed for the road transport of manufactured goods to Johannesburg or Cape Town which will become the distribution centres for the products produced.

The proposed idea for the Foundation is that the community will undergo a three year training period, of which the first six months will be purely skills training. The following 18 months will be production of products where the trainees of the trust will be able to gain experience in the manufacturing process and the final 12 months will be entrepreneurship training. The foundation will assist the trainees to register community co-operatives which they will own and will assist them with funding the co-operatives, so that at the end of the three year period they will become self employed. The foundation will continue the marketing and distribution of products and then buy the products from the co-operatives ensuring that they have sustainable incomes. The foundation will then begin training the next group from the community.

As the community in the town of Richmond are staggering under immense poverty due to no fault of their own, the majority of crimes reported in the town are housebreaking and, not surprisingly, virtually the only items being stolen are food stuff which is a direct indication of just how bad the situation is. The foundation will as a result also start a food gardens project for which we have also been given the use of 3,5 acres of land rent free, with many more tillable acres available.The food gardens will supplement a soup kitchen currently being run 5 days a week in the town, but The foundation will also produce end products for re-sale.

The foundation is a community development project that can and will make a difference in the community of Richmond, but only if funding is obtained. The community development foundation also plans to hold an annual festival/carnival in the town to make it the place one must visit in the heart of the Karoo. Once the project is firmly established in the town of Richmond the foundation plans to expand the concept to other small towns in the Karoo.
Registration:

"The Richmond Community Development Foundation" is registered as an Association incorporated under the Section 21 Company's Act (incorporated not for gain) with the CIPRO Registration Number 2008/00/1433/08 the registration is "The Richmond Community Development Foundation"The Foundation is also registered with the dept. of Social Development as a Non-Profit Organisation with the NPO Registration number: 071-792

The purpose of which is:

To improve the lives of the unskilled and unemployable community of Richmond community by providing sustainable skills training and to assist the trainees with the formation and registration of sustainable community owned co-operatives, and to then provide mentorship and assistance to the community with the management of the co-operatives so as to ensure sustainability and economic independence of the community.

Grants & Donations:

Should you wish to support "The Richmond community Development Foundation, or find out more please contact:

Foundation Chairman: Dr. Peter Baker (011-447-2517), e-mail: pcbaker@mweb.co.za