About Us – Pinetown Development Hub

History

During the Stage 5 lockdown last year, the Pinetown homeless were forced off the street into a camp at Lahee Park, run by the Ethekweni Municipality. Donna Walker, now one of our Pinetown Development Hub (PDH) directors, together with some other socially concerned organisations organised to feed the people at the Lahee Park Camp. The initiative was based at Highway Christian Community (HCC) building close to Lahee Park in Harvey Rd where 2 meals a day were prepared. During this time Donna organised self-improvement classes and started a vegetable garden.

A member of HCC held computer classes without charge for the homeless; a lady started sewing classes for the ladies and Kirshnie Pather, who in 2018 established a Work 4 Living centre at HCC, held free classes for the homeless at Lahee Park. The courses were very successful and there was a lot of interest; 30-40 people in many of the classes. We realised that there is a great need amongst the homeless and unemployed in Pinetown for food and shelter and more importantly training to get out of the poverty trap they have found themselves in.

Established

2022

Number of Projects

Number of Delegates Trained

Business Centre – We want to set up 5 to 10 offices for hire by start-ups and emerging businesses with internet, printing, secretarial services and a shared meeting room. The ultimate outcome is to facilitate numerous start-ups in their first 2 years with low-cost infrastructure in Pinetown to exponentially increase their chances of success.

Entrepreneurial Training – We want to attract young entrepreneurs to be trained with management, financial, sales and marketing skills. We will aim at training 15 candidates initially growing to 100 per year. We had a good start in November 2021 with 15 trainees and 10 graduated in June 2022 with completed business plans.

We partnered with Domino Foundation in July 2022 with their Business in a Box entrepreneurial training aimed at vulnerable women to assist them in making some extra income for their families. We’ve held 3 very successful day courses in 2022 and trained 41 entrepreneurs. Together with Domino, we’ll hold 8 courses in 2023. Please see the “Entrepreneurial Training” tab for more information. We will liaise with Pinetown businesses and offer our services to train supply chain entrepreneurs for their businesses and attract their Social Responsibility and BEE funds to finance the entrepreneurs. We are able to offer Sect18A tax certificates for any cash or in-kind support.

Skills Development – 4th Industrial revolution skills centred on IT and programming are in great demand today. We will focus on two areas for training:

30-40 years olds that have already proven themselves to have entrepreneurial abilities. School Leavers that have good literacy abilities but lack experience.

We will upskill both groups and seek placements in local businesses for the successful graduates. The ultimate outcome is to train hundreds of candidates and find positions in Pinetown businesses for as many as possible.

Community Outreach – During the lockdown, we took a piece of the parking area and planted a vegetable garden and used it to train some Lahee Park homeless in “Farming God’s Way”. We saw the benefit of this training and one of our directors has qualified with Farming God’s Way to train and promote organic vegetable gardening, sustainable farming practices and good nutrition in Pinetown and surrounding communities. See the “Community” tab, “FGW” for more detail.

In time we want to establish a shelter for the Pinetown homeless and clothe and feed them with the objective that they are fitted into one of the operations i), ii) and iii) described above. We will start with a shelter for 20 and grow this to 100. This way we hope to lower the number of homeless on the Pinetown streets and generate business in the city.