AI 2018 Business Excellence Awards

22 Acquisition International - 2018 Business Excellence Awards IF180005 Award for Excellence in Community Projects 2018 - South Africa Dreamcatcher South Africa Working with diverse cultures in 20 South African regions and communities over 30 years, Dreamcatcher’s impact is guided and assessed against the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Anthea explores the organisation’s work and how it aims to support a wide range of causes. “Dreamcatcher puts the global phenomenon of tourism to work to mutually benefit both the visitor and local communities, in an initiative we started years ago called “Go truly Local”. On this branded experience, we address an ever growing trend of visitors who want to venture outside the proverbial “bus window” to connect with -and engage our amazing people, eat with them, rub shoulders, work together on rewarding projects, walkabout and stay over in their communities. Vitally, all these experiences are wholly owned by a growing number of local enterprises, of which particularly included, women and youth. South Africa is a country with incredible, diverse geographical and cultural attributes. We are enabling a growing band of new enterprises to join tourism business in South Africa, contributing rewarding products and peripheral services, to alleviate poverty relief and job creation sustainably. A new local mindset, benefiting a wide range of causes and positively impacting on communities and their environment, has emerged”. Over the past 25 years, Dreamcatcher has set to work to re-imagine tourism routes by actively enabling geographical spread and “opening up” South Africa, its incredible, diverse regions and amazing local encounters within these communities. We have wilfully enabled geographical spread, offering visitors experiences and places outside the bus window, they never new existed. Reaching, living and working in communities across South Africa, Dreamcatcher applies a pluralistic socio-economic model, with an end to benefit greater society, in sight right from the start. It is an approach and ethos which works for the people and the environment they live in. It is a road map guiding all our activities. Starting out from humble beginnings and driven by a desire to improve quality of life, unlock and introduce our country as it truly is, and enable a new fraternity of tourism business in South Africa, we are viewed as pioneers today. It is something which we are justly proud of. “The Dreamcatcher Way”, implies that local enterprises in host communities grow sustainably, creating the jobs and invest in growth where they live. We continue to re-imagine unique destinations, enterprises running them, products and experiences in which the local community as the custodians of their region, benefit and grow. As the years have passed we deliberately veered away from the traditional monistic socio- economic business model. “Tourism and travel with its peripheral services, is one, if not the , world’s largest and most resilient industries. Yet is has largely been run on the traditional monistic economic model. Applying a pluralistic approach to our initiatives, we can report and it is fair to say, (without prejudice as we believe that our approach will grow economies alongside monistically run models), we can report that the Dreamcatcher enterprises experienced no negative contraction or losses as a result of the “Crash” of global markets in September 10 years ago. The opposite happened! The enterprises continued to grow. Our approach grew more relevant. Today we continue to assist visitors to Southern Africa, as well as a steady growing band of tour operators, to add new values to their offering: amazing local experiences wholly owned and run by local enterprises, creating jobs where they live. We are proud to say that we have been addressing the UN2030 Sustainable Development goals since the launch of its predecessor in 2000. Dreamcatcher put tourism and travel to work to provide opportunities for struggling communities to improve quality of life and a future in which they can thrive. We spoke to Anthea Rossouw, Founder and Programme Leader, to find out more. Company/Organisation: Dreamcatcher South Africa Contact: Anthea Rossouw - Founder and Programme Leader Head office: St Augustine’s Church Grounds, Melkhoutfontein, 6674, Hessequa, Western Cape South Africa. Phone: 0027 (0) 28 754 3469 Satellite Office: Dreamcatcher UK - 85 Park Royal, 66 Montpelier Road, Brighton BN1 3BL United Kingdom. Phone 0044 (0) 1273 779786 Web Address: www.dreamcatchersouthafrica.com SOUTH AFRICA DREAMCATCHER FOUNDATION Walking The Talking To End Poverty Community Team Photo: Dreamcatcher Wasteland - Graced Land Project, South Africa