An entrepreneur focused on a community’s sense of place

Add as a preferred source on Google

CANDACE Edgar, a recent addition to the St Lucia community, is fast making headway in her goal to promote small businesses in the greater St Lucia area.

A small business owner herself, Candace’s aim is to support entrepreneurs in a way previously lacking in the community.

In her endeavour to provide one point from which a variety of local entrepreneurs could sell their wares, she reached out to the St Lucia community for artwork, crafts and handmade jewellery.

Four months later at least ten St Lucia residents are enjoying profits from the sale of their crafts in Candace’s shop. Moreover, she has easily maintained her ‘locally sourced, locally produced’ motto.

While Candace didn’t want to be just another seller of market curios, she did want to include Khula Village Community members’ crafts on her inventory.

Striving to stock unique goods, Candace came across Jeremy Kirkwood, who makes and sells tea boxes. A fairly mundane product, one might think, but not so in this case.

Khula Village Community members are charged with making the wooden boxes, which are then screen-printed with a map of the immediate area – Khula, Monzi and St Lucia – putting a completely local spin on his products.

The boxes are then stuffed with tea, whether Bushman Rooibos or Zulu Breakfast, and sold with a leaflet outlining the origin of the tea.

African Impact runs a number of programmes, including a craft programme to help local communities. Participants, predominantly from Khula Village, make beaded jewellery and crafts which Candace sells. The money made in the sale of these items goes back to the crafters.

While certain items, such as the made-to-order Kenyan Masai shoes and a range of Johannesburg-made beauty products are included on Candace’s shelves, they are not mass-produced and stand for the very type of small enterprises with which Candace wants to associate.

Made from materials local to the areas from which these products originate, they are handmade by either family-owned enterprises or small businesses employing only two or three people.

While Candace strives to help promote members of all communities in the area, her main aim is to help women stand on their own feet.

She feels she can achieve this by promoting people’s talents and abilities. Genuinely surprised at how fast her shop has grown, Candace is looking forward to a bright future for all involved in making it a community success.