ABOUT US
The SOZO Foundation About US

WHERE WE WORK

Vrygrond is a vibrant and multi-cultural community situated in the Cape Flats of Cape Town, South Africa.

One of the oldest informal settlements in the Cape, Vrygrond was originally a fishermen’s village. Today, Vrygrond is home to a diverse but impoverished community from across the Cape, South Africa and the African continent.

With over 45,000 people living in this one square kilometre of land, the community faces a number of challenges such as gang activity, unemployment and extreme poverty.

MEET THE TRIBE

Our work in the Vrygrond Community wouldn’t be possible without our dedicated team, the Sozo Tribe with over 70 members. Over 75% of our staff are from the local community. We are passionate about raising role models from within the community.

The SOZO Foundation-workshop

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

At Sozo, we are passionate about Sustainable Development and adhere to the UN Sustainable Development Goals, which are an urgent call for action that recognize that ending poverty and other deprivations must go hand-in-hand with strategies that improve health and education, reduce inequality, and spur economic growth – all while tackling climate change and working to preserve our oceans and forests.

Goal 4: Quality Education
Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.
Goal 8: Decent work and Economic Growth
Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all

WITH OVER 45,000 PEOPLE LIVING IN THIS ONE SQUARE KILOMETRE OF LAND, THE COMMUNITY FACES A NUMBER OF CHALLENGES.

(Jensen, S., Polatin, P., Naidoo, D., 2011. Violence and community activism in Vrygrond, South Africa.)

GANG ACTIVITY

UNEMPLOYMENT

EXTREME POVERTY

CRIME & VIOLENCE

DRUG & VIOLENCE ABUSE

Why you should partner with us:

12 YEARS OF EXPERIENCE
The Sozo Foundation is a non-profit organisation, based in the impoverished Cape Flats community of Vrygrond, Cape Town. With a vision to see the community of Vrygrond living with dignity, purpose and hope, Sozo creates opportunities for holistic development through four key areas: Education, Skills, Enterprise and Entrepreneurship.
OUR VISION
We run core projects that work to promote Education, Skills Development, Enterprise and Entrepreneurship in Vrygrond. Our current projects are Educentre, GED General Education Diploma, Youth Café Skills Schools, The Wild Goose Bakery, Dancing Goat Roastery and Kingdom Builders.
OUR MISSION
The Sozo mission is to create pathways to youth employment through education, skills development, enterprise and entrepreneurship. Our Sozo Skills Schools include barista training, construction, baking, beauty, hair, and coding. For our work to be sustainable for years to come, forming deep and lasting relationships with community members is essential. This is why everything we do in the community is through relationships with individuals and other like-minded organisations and partners.
WE'RE FIGHTING THE UNEMPLOYMENT RATE
The current problem is the rising unemployment rate in South Africa, reaching 77.4% - which is one of the highest in the world. Our mission is to see all the young adults in Vrygrond in education, employment or training.
SOZO SOLUTION
The Sozo model offers vocational skills schools, life skills, job readiness and job shadowing opportunities. We provide opportunities for skills development, where community members can learn new trades and improve upon existing knowledge. This empowers people with the tools necessary to generate an income and rise above poverty.
FACILITATING ENTERPRISE AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP DEVELOPMENT
We’re incubating youth-owned micro-businesses to create youth employment. We assist our skills school graduates with starting their own micro-businesses through one-on-one mentorship and coaching. We provide an incubation hub space for internet access, business training and workshops. This increases the chance of success and growth of these businesses by reducing the barriers to youth employment in Vrygrond and the surrounding areas.

MORE REASONS TO PARTNER WITH US

As an organisation, we are continuously striving for innovative thinking in our systems, resulting in Simpler, Smoother, Smarter processes to maximize capacity with excellent efficiency.

People Plus: Within the past two 2 years, The Sozo Foundation has seen its staff complement almost doubled in numbers. Using an external outdated payroll and human resource management system would not be sustainable. People Plus employee management is a reliable cloud-based human resource and payroll software. This software allows for accurate record-keeping on all our employees, saving time and human capacity.

Labourwise: Labourwise is a unique labour relations advisory service for small, medium-sized and larger businesses to make labour legislation user-friendly, understandable, practical, affordable and accessible. Having partnered with Labourwise, we are able to keep all human resource and labour-related matters in line with updated mandatory labour regulations.

Xero Accounting Software is a worldwide, highly-recognized, cloud-based accounting software that we have incorporated as part of improving our systems. Having implemented this simple yet advanced accounting system, we are able to track financial transactions with ease making for better reporting to all our donors and funders and in-house finance accountability.

Salesforce: We have been developing our Fundraising Systems through Salesforce as our Customer Relationship Manager (CRM) tool for Monitoring and Evaluation.

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Meet the Sozo Founders:

Anton and Elana Cuyler are proudly South African and have a passion to see the next generation rise to fulfil their destinies. This passion and calling is what brought them back to South Africa, from the United Kingdom and they are both fully invested in the vision of the organisation. Anton oversees the organisation as the CEO and Elana oversees the wellness of our staff and our student wellness(mental health) team as Chief Wellness Officer. They have beautiful twins; boy and girl who both love hanging out at Sozo; especially in the baking school…