WIMSA
Current Activities

 

The main areas in which San communities have asked for assistance from WIMSA are:

  • education and training;

  • institutional capacity-building;

  • development planning;

  • tourism;

  • land and natural resources;

  • finance; and

  • networking.

Field trips are placed high on the WIMSA co-ordinator's agenda because they enable the organisation to work more effectively in these areas. It is essential to consult the San communities in their own environment, thus keeping in constant contact with grassroots organisations is a high priority.

During 1998/99, however, San representatives increasingly took up opportunities to visit the WIMSA office to report on developments in their communities, to discuss specific requests, to ask advice on strategies and approaches to particular problems and to arrange for WIMSA facilitation of their meetings with government officials and NGO personnel. As most of these San representatives live in remote rural areas without access to any effective telecommunication means, they often have no choice but to appear unannounced at the WIMSA office. This requires a high degree of flexibility on the part of the WIMSA team, but the team has unanimously agreed that sticking rigidly to work plans rather than serving these representatives who have travelled very long distances to reach the office is unjustifiable.