Koekies vir ons boere projek

Dear Yaseen.  I will write this email in english, allthough the Northern Cape is very afrikaans.

The baking for our farmer’s project started in November 2019.  The Save the Sheep empowerment team allready was in process to bake for the holliday and Christmas season to generate funds to assist farmers in need in Sutherland district.  We got a call from a town also affected by the drought, begging for assistance to also help them to generate funds to soften the effects of the ongoing drought.  We decided to give this a go, and the results was amazing.  We started a project called the ‘koekies vir ons boere’ project. The Cookie project was a huge success. We had the help of Caring Daisies, a charity, based in Pretoria, and together we managed to pay out R2.9 million rand to farmers wives from December 2019 to March 2020.  This project was so successful that we decided to open it up in July after the hard lockdown due to the Covid 19 pandemic was lifted.  The plea from the communities involved in this project was to high to ignore.

Since we opened up, we were able to assist 7 towns to generate an income.  We strive to get all towns in desperate need to participate in this project. The original project is the only project which still maintain the  purpose of the idea, to give all towns a chance to generate funds to survive the effects of the drought, we strive to  be fair, and to work together as a team to make sure all involved gets a chance to earn an income.

Currently we have 7 towns involved in the project, we need to pick this up to ensure all towns in need get a fair chance.  We also helped  in the Eastern Cape, towns willing to take the next step are all welcome.  We strive to involve more towns in our project, and for this we desperately need orders for cookies, we bake by order because, due to the drought, our communities does not have the financial recourses to keep stock.

The idea of creating a source of income in the Karoo had a very positive effect on all involved in the project.  The Karoo needs people with a backbone, people who are willing to make the effort to endure hardships such as drought by taking opportunities and trying to be self sufficient  This project had numerous successes.  Jobs were created, very needed in the Northern Cape  with the highest unemployment rate in our country, as well as a turn around in the shops of the local towns, also very much needed, we need our local stores to be functional.

We sell cookies, in a bucket, or a box, the latter our first choice, we do want to participate in the effort to reduce the plastic foodprint in our enviroment as we are farmers and feel the effect of climate change.

600 grams of first class home baked cookies, consisting of 3 filled cookies, and 3 basic cookies, cost R80.  This is not mass production cookies, but carefully baked with love, hope and most of all, faith.  Faith that we will endure, we are not alone.  This is drought relief in a different form. We are giving back.  We are protecting women’s self esteem by encouraging them to earn a living.  We are encouraging women to empower themselves, we are creating jobs.  We are adressing unemployment,  we are enhancing profitability of livestock farms in the drought stricken Karoo and, by doing this, we are participating in an effort to help our country to be the best it can be.  Simply by creating opportunities.  We are trying to be the difference, going under, or standing strong.

Inserted in this email are pictures of what we do, and how we do it.  The advertisements include paxi post details, but we can deliver in Cape Town for better prices.  Even for free if we can manage to get a huge order.

For any other info, pictures and continuous feedback of what we are doing to create opportunities, please feel free to visit our fb page, Save the Sheep Products, to verify our efforts to assist on a daily basis where needed.

For any other information, please contact me, Sybil Visagie, on 071 2566 795.

Thank you for helping us, helping the Northern Cape.  We are desperate to keep our farmers on the farms, to ensure job security and to prevail agains all odds.  We believe we can, we are not alone.

Thank you for reaching out.

Kind regards
Sybil Visagie