Special Commendation — Investing in the Future Corporate Award: Old Mutual Foundation’s Gift project
How do you give corporate gift buyers access to local hand-made products and provide the country’s many talented crafters with an entrée to this major niche market?
This is the question the Old Mutual Foundation’s Gift project tried to answer. Gift is an initiative of the Cape Craft & Design Institute (CCDI) and the Old Mutual Foundation. It has stepped into the breach by linking hordes of the country’s talented craftspeople with the market.
The initiative under way in the East City part of Cape Town’s central business district is meant to provide a link between South Africa’s corporate gift buyers and the city’s crafts people.
Gift seeks to halt a trend that sees companies mass-producing gifts and, by doing so, undermining hand-crafted local ones.
The project not only directs significant revenue from corporate gift giving to the mostly informal and under-resourced micro-businesses, but also aims to replace the dominant mass-produced, imported corporate gifts with hand-crafted local products.
Rose Reddy, general manager of Gift, says a lack of effective communication between corporate buyers and craft producers has been a major hindrance to trade.
”Craft producers, often based in townships or remote rural areas, have limited logistical know-how and support, and corporate gift buyers are understandably concerned about their orders being fulfilled,” says Reddy.
This has created a situation in which local craftspeople are cut off from the lucrative market.
The CCDI was launched in 2001 by the provincial government of the Western Cape and the Cape Peninsula University of Technology to support the crafts sector in the province. It is involved in product development, training and providing support in getting goods to the market.
The CCDI, in collaboration with the Old Mutual Foundation, kick-started the programme with a training programme for 18 craftsmen. Their products were showcased at an exhibition at the Spier Wine Estate, called Afro Deco: Living in Our Global World. In fact, some of the showcased works have become permanent fixtures in the Spier Art Room.
This demonstrates the important role Gift plays in bridging the gap between the sectors by providing support for craftspeople and at the same time keeping the market constantly and well serviced with products, all delivered on time.
Kate Miszewski, head of the Old Mutual Foundation, argues that providing people with skills is not enough. ”For those skills to change lives we also need to open markets to those who’ve never been trained,” she says.
CCDI’s executive director, Erica Elk, says the research that preceded the formation of Gift showed there was huge potential for craft products. ”There is a window of opportunity in South Africa — and probably globally too — where public and private sector companies are increasingly seeking sustainable ways to ‘give back’ to the community,” says Elk.
She says Gift provides companies with a socially responsible ”gifting solution that will help them meet corporate social investment and broad-based black economic empowerment targets while supporting the development of indigenous design and the creative and social capital of South Africa”.