What started as a Facebook group (“People doing good things on the Wild Coast”) over ten years ago has grown into the annual Wild Coast Forum. Each year, an organisation/backpackers hosts the event and brings together community-based organisations and businesses along the Wild Coast to share all the good work being done.
This year, Bulungula Incubator hosted the event at Bulungula Lodge. A record twenty organisations attended, making the event successful and very fun. We had the opportunity to present our data management system, which aids in our project monitoring and evaluation. Additionally, we shared our best practices in community stakeholder engagement for deep community-embeddedness, and discussed our effective fundraising strategies.
These events are integral to our broader impact strategy, allowing us to share valuable lessons we’ve learned. Given the similarities in the contexts in which we work, these connections and collaborations have immense potential for positive change in our region.
These connections have also greatly benefitted the BI. One example, last year at the forum, we met Katie Botha, who is an architect. At the time, we were busy planning the renovations for Bulungula Health Point and desperately needed a trained architect. Her expertise was instrumental in designing the building, especially considering the complexities posed by our old mud-brick structure. A year later, we have a beautiful new health point thanks to Katie and meeting at the event.
Being surrounded by inspiring individuals doing work always energises us. Thank you to all who attended and made the event such a success. We are grateful for the opportunity to host and look forward to more forums to come!
Attendees: Afrocooling, Axium Education, Job Skils and Entrepreneurship Programme, Bulungula Community Radio, Bulungula Health Point, Bulungula Incubator, Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA), Equality Collective, Hlumis Rural Heatlh Foundation, Isilimela Hospital, Homba Crafts, Jabulani Rural Heatlh Foundation, Layita Foundation, Lubanzi Theatre Company, Nosh, Nosintu Gwebindlala Foundation, Nozibele Solutions, Sihamba Sonke, Transcape NPO, Viva con Agua, Wild Lubanzi Backpackers.