Meet the ladies behind the Lavender in Lavender Hill products: Part 1
After studying and graduating from BAS (Bachelor in Architectural Science) at UCT I decided to change my route and move to entrepreneurship. I have always wanted to own my own company. I am an extremely creative person and doing business is an extremely creative process. I completed a post graduate degree in Management in Entrepreneurship at UCT. This, combined with my compassionate heart and creativity, launched me into starting up an NPO called the Lavender Upliftment Trust along with two other trustees.
I managed this NPO in Lavender Hill for two years. The aim of the NPO was to plant lavender gardens in the community of Lavender Hill for beautification. After a year of running this NPO I started developing the enterprise Lavender in Lavender Hill on the side. Through my experience at the NPO I saw that there were many good people in the community and became aware of their struggles and need for assistance. Lavender in Lavender Hill was started specifically to improve the quality of life of the community members. The concept was to use the lavender gardens being planted through the Lavender Upliftment Trust to become urban farms for the production of lavender products.
Unfortunately the community did not buy into the lavender garden concept as some gardens were vandalised and as many community members could not afford watering their gardens due to the municipality increasing water rates at that time. Due to lack of funding in the NPO we were unable to continue the gardens. I left the NPO after two years. Lavender in Lavender Hill still continued but the social aim had to change, moving away from the idea of urban lavender farms and moving towards job creation and entrepreneurial empowerment.
Now, Lavender in Lavender Hill's social aim is to support job creation and entrepreneurial empowerment in the Lavender Hill community and surrounding Cape Town areas. For this reason we mainly work with community and underprivileged producers, small enterprises, entrepreneurs and companies that support job creation and empowerment. To assist the Lavender Hill community members we offer education sessions and donations of plants for personal or small enterprise use. We also assist people from the community and surrounding Cape Town areas with business opportunity creation and training.
The beauty of the Lavender in Lavender Hill products is that they are of extremely high quality with wonderful healing benefits yet they have a social story behind them. This gives you two reasons to purchase.
