‘These Hands’ reach out to Rasesa

These Hands, a global social enterprise startup has empowered the community of Rasesa in Kgatleng through various initiatives geared towards improving their livelihoods.

The not for-profit organisation based in Botswana, trains and supports rural community innovators/entrepreneurs to develop their countries.

The enterprise has from the 5th to the 16th of October run their supporting programme in Rasesa, providing solutions to some of the problems faced by the community in the village.

Thabiso Mashaba, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of These Hands said that their approach is bottom-up and that in order to run training in a village, they await community members to contact them and ask the community to select 15 20 participants.

“We ask them to select 15 -20 participants that will be committed to two-week training and then liaise with their Village Development Community (VDC) and secure a venue where we can train from. In Rasesa, we were contacted by a youth leader called Tsholofelo Koitsiwe and once we fulfilled our expectations, we agreed on the dates,” explained Mashaba.

In Rasesa, These Hands developed three solutions for the villagers which were divided into three teams.

The first solution was to solve the problem faced by the children in the village of ages ranging from five to ten years who roam the streets due to lack of extra-curricular activities.

To address the problem, the enterprise developed an all-in-one educational games unit which consists of nine games that can be used as a teaching aid at schools and at home.

The second solution developed for the community was a pedal-powered maize/sorghum shelling machine after the realization that farmers in Rasesa village struggle with access to post-harvest technologies, particularly for shelling staple food like maize and sorghum.

The third solution was aimed at addressing the challenge faced by small scale poultry farmers in Rasesa who need chick brooders.

As a result, a portable chick brooder was developed which has electrical and traditional heat capabilities to increase productivity and keep the chicks alive.