I’ve awarded a grant to Otto Kgosiemang. Otto leads Heritage Adventures Botswana (here on Facebook), H/T Thomas O’Neill via Forbes U30.

Otto writes:

See the Botswana that other's don't... This is a slogan that drives a business that looks to give authentic heritage experiences to all those who travel to Botswana. With this grant we will expand our reach to communities and individuals within the country that are open to sharing their history and culture with the rest of the world.

 

Botswana uses a Community Based National Resource Management(CBNRM) model, where the communities are responsible for taking care of the natural resources in their locations. However, statistics from an EU report from 2012 show that this model has been unsuccessful, the main issue being the community members have not been taught how to be enterprising with their given resources. 

 

We are trying to help those communities and individuals look at their resources and talents in a different light. First having started in the Manyana we expanded on the existing famous rock paintings by involving the people to share their heritage in the form of something as small as story telling to crafts and traditional tea. Now we are looking to the village of Molepolole and its surrounding villages such as Kaudwane and surrounding farm lands where we can have locals share their way of life and still earn a living at the same time.

 

In as much as we are building our tourism product, we would like to empower the small communities in the southern region such that they are able to survive beyond the clients we would bring them. For example, there is the village of Kaudwane on the outskirts of Molepolole, it is one of the few settlements of the San people in the region. With the volume of visitors to Khutse Game Reserve, the village of Kaudwane would benefit from having an accommodation facility on the doorstep of the reserve, as well as open up opportunity to an increase in the number of visitors to the reserve more so that Khutse Game Reserve only offers wild camping. The community would benefit from having being informed and the training we would like to offer them. Moreover, there are members of the community there who make authentic 'Bushmen' crafts such as artwork, leather crafts, pottery and beads etc who do not know where or how to market these souvenirs. Currently they're sold by a few to companies like Botswana craft. These individuals, have currently stopped the mini enterprises due to a lack of market. 

One thing to note is that there is almost no economic activity in the village. Even the public transport runs only twice a day being morning and late afternoons - to and from Letlhakane only. 

 

The community has welcomed us and is looking forward to our return as we had wanted to make time to share with them our knowledge of how they could create products and services to benefit their community. We will not own any of their products or services, the guides we intend to train from Kaudwane and Molepolole will not be full time employees, instead we intend to expose them to our travel agents that they may get direct bookings beyond the package of the region which we will offer though our business. 

 

In the village of Molepolole we will mainly be working with individuals looking to host tourists to share their lives, gifts, products and/or services. These include and are not limited to a traditional healer, crafts makers, farmers and traditional food cooks. We would like to work with them because some have shown interest in working with us, and others we have heard of. Furthermore the village has a beautiful history, currently has a what would be the largest museum in Botswana under construction, apart from the already existing one. What is now viewed and certified as the largest clay pot in the world by Guinness World records is located in this village but as a tourism product it is unheard of. Molepolole is the gateway to the Kalahari, a tourism product that combines history, culture and wildlife in this region would bring a different appeal to the southern region of Botswana as a tourism destination.

 

That said, funds will be going to our business channelled towards logistics of product development alongside the community empowerment initiative we wish to expedite. It involves teaching the people how to be enterprising and sensitizing them on being hosts to international clients from different parts of the world.