income generation

For over 10 years we have been running our income generating projects to give talented people who are without work the opportunity to earn money through skilled crafts.

In the first few years, mainly HIV positive people from our community produced these colourful and wonderful beads you can find in our bead shop today .

Nowadays all bead-workers work from home and deliver the finished art products, which are for sale at our shop. From September to December it is especially busy, as every year at this time there are big orders from Germany for beadworks or Christmas cards, organized by Dr. Margarete Doppler. Dr. Margarete Doppler delivers the products to all the customers in Germany.

The second place where the beadwork is directly available is our Beadshop on the grounds of iThemba Labantu. The main items are keyrings and animals made of beads.

The other big project next to the Beadwork is the ceramics workshop which is situated on our grounds as well. Since 2009 beautiful cups, muesli bowls, jugs, plates etc. have been produced at our workshop, managed by our ceramic artist Mfuneko. The ceramic items are very popular and well-known. These fine items are all hand painted with  exquisite African designs. The pieces are sold by friends and partners in Germany, Sweden and the USA. We always welcome orders to enable us to continue these important projects.

Visitors are always excited about seeing our shop and happy about supporting local artists by buying cups, flowers and keyrings. We buy all products at a fair price from the artists, which supports local artists. We guarantee that everything in our shop is handmade, relies on fair-trade with fair prices and supports the local artists and our Community Centre.