Not only do we want our clients to enjoy world-class golfing experiences but also join hands with the champions of conservation and community restoration. Through its conservation foundation, Golfing for Change, Ascot Tours wishes to make a tangible difference at ground level on the African continent, helping endangered wildlife thrive and disadvantaged communities flourish. We are proud and honoured to play our part in building a sustainable future and to let every swing contribute to the greater good.
How Ascot Tours’ Golfing for Change put down roots in Oupad, Knysna: It began the way most real things do: small, unplanned, and entirely at someone’s own expense. Martin and Diana Gelant started cooking for their neighbours in Oupad out of their own kitchen — a domestic space never designed to feed anyone beyond a family. Word travelled. The queue outside their door grew until roughly 150 people were arriving for a single meal. A household pot had become a community kitchen, not by strategy but by demand.
Golfing for Change, Ascot Tours’ community initiative, has now supported Martin and Diana’s work for over a year. The aim has never been to arrive with a plan and hand it over. It has been to remove the obstacles that stop good people from doing what they are already doing well.
In practice, that means the kitchen no longer has to raise money to survive week to week. Groceries arrive reliably. Everyday running costs are covered. Heavy-duty pots and utensils have replaced domestic cookware never meant for this kind of volume. Four members of the local team receive monthly stipends — real jobs, held by people who live in the community they serve.
The effect is quiet but decisive. Martin, Diana and their team no longer spend their energy fundraising. They spend it cooking, and the kitchen serves more people because of it. Hot meals reach the households that need them most: small children, and the elderly who have the least ability to absorb a bad month. Care spills past the kitchen walls, too. When a child cannot go to school for want of a uniform, the initiative steps in. It is a small intervention with a long shadow — a child in class today is a different adult in fifteen years.
Meals currently go out twice a week. The near-term goal is three days, with breakfast added for the children — because a child who eats before school learns differently from one who doesn’t. Beyond the pot, Ascot Tours is turning its attention to the community’s young boys. The plan is a mentorship programme built around two pillars: team sport and individual academic support. Boys who are coached, backed and expected to show up tend to become men who do the same for others. New facilities will be built to house the programme properly, rather than borrowing corners of spaces that were never meant for it.
There is no illusion here about scale. The need in Oupad is far larger than what a kitchen and a sports programme can answer, and everyone involved knows it. But community building is not a project with a delivery date. It is organic and alive — it grows at the speed of trust. Our intention is not to arrive with solutions but to stay long enough to understand the place and its people, and to nurture what is already growing here. A tiny kitchen fed 150 people because two neighbours decided to start. Everything that follows grows from beginnings like that one.
Ascot Tours’ conservation and restoration initiative, Golfing for Change, is privileged to play its part in empowering the Sweetwaters community by sponsoring the mentoring of an Asidlale Early Development Centre which will benefit about 20 children.
At iThemba Projects the guiding principle is that people—not handouts—bring lasting change. Their commitment to the Sweetwaters community reflects a long-term, holistic approach, beginning with early childhood development and extending to post-school gap year initiatives, engaging the entire community as active stakeholders.
iThemba is a registered PBO 930025842 and is audited annually by PriceWaterhouseCoopers.
For more information, please visit www.ithembaprojects.com
Asidlale Program Ithemba Projects’ flagship project focuses on mentoring ECD centres to improve the quality of early learning. Through long-term, one-on-one mentoring of at least 3 – 4 years and community development, the aim is to make quality ECD education the norm in Sweetwaters. To combat stunting caused by poor diets, families are educated about nutrition, organic gardens in 36 schools were established, and a seedling nursery is run to create sustainable food sources.
Addressing the challenges of a fatherless generation, youth programs provide mentorship, life-skills training, and constructive activities like running clubs, life groups, and camps. Young people are empowered to make positive life choices and become community leaders. Unemployed community members are trained in sustainable building techniques, enabling them to construct and renovate ECD centres and other facilities. This creates jobs and builds vital infrastructure using eco-friendly technologies.