Income generation

For over 17 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 colorful and wonderful beaded items you can find in our shop today .

Nowadays all bead-workers work from home and deliver the finished art products, which are for sale at our shop. 

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. We always welcome orders to enable us to continue these important projects.

Visitors are always excited about seeing our shop and happy to support local artists by buying cups, flowers and keyrings. We buy all products at a fair price from the artists, which supports local artists. We pay all artists a fair price for their products and guarantee that all items in our shop are handmade by inhabitants of Philippi.

A lot of people in the poverty stricken communities of Cape Town survive through the collection of garbage. They collect all the recyclables and bring them to collection points. With their work they don't only support their families but also have a positive impact on the garbage challenge of the big city. With sponsored equipement from the Department of Environment and Planning and our business tutoring they can do their work in a decent and safe way.