Knysna Township Pre-School

Education is one of the highest goods in today’s world and should be made available and accessible to everyone. Unfortunately, not everyone has free access to it.

In the early nineties, apartheid came to an end in South Africa but the deep scars remain present especially in South Africa’s townships. Townships, used as a method to segregate black South Africans through the Group Areas Act of 1950, are located on the outskirts of urban areas and provide large populations with small portions of land.

Nelson Mandela once said, “education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world”. Currently, only 9.6% of South Africa’s population speaks English, in the Western Cape it’s only 24% and in the township communities, the statistics are far worse.

We saw an opportunity to give back to the local communities and support children in accessing the education they deserve by building a pre-school in a Knysna township, in partnership with Peggy’s Art & Tours. The project began in 2023, but was placed on hold in May of that year after the sudden passing of our beloved Peggy Dlephu – whom we first met in 2017. Out of respect for her and her family, we paused the initiative to allow them time to grieve and process the loss.

So far, we have established a soup kitchen which runs three times a week for school-going and kindergarten kids (94 children at the moment) and we donate stationery, school uniforms and books through the tours that we run. We also encourage our guests to support, donate and buy proudly South African hand-made products to uplift the local communities. At the pre-school, we are busy finishing a heartfelt project with a converted container structure of two classrooms plus a kitchen and outside toilets.