The One Problem Interview: Anthea Rossouw, Founder of Dreamcatcher

Leave No One Behind

Hi there, my name is Avil Beckford, I just started a new series called The One Problem. My guests come on, they present one problem, not all the problems, just one. And they have about five to 10 minutes to present the problem and also to offer a solution. The whole idea for the series is that we learn from one another. My special guest today, I've known her for about 15 years. Time flies. Her name is Anthea Rossouw. She is the founder and program leader for Dreamcatcher, South Africa. And she is a social change management specialist. Let me turn it over to you now.

Anthea Rossouw

Good afternoon and thank you so much for the opportunity. Well, I'll jump right in. I was born and raised in South Africa during the times of Apartheid. I was raised in a multicultural household, my father speaking Xhosa, one of the indigenous languages which Nelson Mandela spoke. My my dad too, as he was born and raised in the same Province as Nelson Mandela, speaking English and Xhosa fluently.

My dad actually was relocated to a new province and region of South Africa and his ability to speak Xhosa in this new region, was viewed as rare for a white man.  When we landed there,  I found socialising difficult and confusing because I'd grown up multiculturally. Our new home province was linked to white domination during Apartheid times and I encountered the whole situation where there was total exclusion for all black cultures in close proximity. For me that was strange because I was raised  multiculturally until I arrived there as a young girl.

Interview With Anthea Rossouw, Founder Dreamcatcher

South Africa

And when I studied, I decided that I would actually go and address that barrier when I had the opportunity. Nelson Mandela, our Madiba, when he came out of prison,  asked all South Africans to work together to make it a better life for all. I took that literally and figuratively, because it had been a problem to me, which I was running into all the time, studying at university, .

Because of that, I chose to delve directly into social change management. At that point, it was very, very nondescript. There was no need for social change because it had been legitimized in law, as segregation. So when Nelson Mandela, at his Presidential inauguration, asked us all to work together to make it better for everybody, he actually meant to leave no one behind. I found it extremely difficult personally to penetrate this society, which I now as an adult working woman had to do.

Anthea Rossouw

Because of all these laws and structures in place, I thought, well, can I actually change this? I realized right there, that you can't change the wind's direction, but if you want to change the destination of the boat, you can change/redirect the sails. So that is what I decided I was going to do if I was going to do to help change along where I could.  To change where I lived, targeting some local communities my goal was to help to empower, specifically women living in very difficult socio-economiccircumstances.

Through my husband, a local dentist, I learned via his patients, that there was much talent out there. So I actually turned the problem into a solution.  I went truly local, as every plan, every strategy, rule and action, in South Africa was prescribed at the national level and actioned at the provincial level. So I decided to turn that around.  If I was going to gain knowledge of the values of  women and youth to enable change: the solution had to be locally.

To do my little bit to help, I would go into communitie to help me actually find what the problems were for the disenfranchised people who had struggled through all of this, yet were also dreaming now of this new free South Africa. Going truly local, concentrating  on finding out all the local challenges in the township communities, I experienced that it wasn't only  that I needed to gain the knowledge of the facts.  I gained invaluable knowledge of the local values to guide us to success, in the ‘new' local South Africa of then. In our Post-Pandemic ‘new normal' those local values now expressed by local people everywhere, seem strikingly similar.

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Anthea Rossouw

And the first thing that came up because tourism and travel is a very big scale and it was sustaining many, many tourism industries in South Africa. So most of them living close to these tourism destinations said, you know what I want, I want to turn from a servant to a service. I want to be an enterprise. Please help. So once again, going truly local, I knew that we would then find all the problems which would be holding all these women back, and the youth unemployed, to turn themselves into an enterprise in a seriously protected industry, once again, everything local.

So we found all the solutions and all the problems because all the problems were shared by the women.. They didn't have their homes, they didn't have the knowledge, they didn't have the skills they needed to transition from offering the service as a tour guide, or as a cuisine, or as an accommodation to people that in the past had only cleaned the hotels and the ablutions. So in all of this, we decided not to concentrate on the women and the youth and the patriarchs in the community, not on what is out there right now, but what it could be.

Anthea Rossouw

And at that very time, the UN Sustainable Goals were launched in 2000. I struggled for 10 years. I couldn't get it right. And then after those 10 years going local, we had a new pluralistic model on how black tourism enterprises could function in a sophisticated environment where people would meet standards, and they would meet security. And like today, with Covid-19 clean and green and the sustainable development goals, all of that. All of it because what happened was that in all those goals, it was environmental integrity, leave no one behind, address exclusion, address social cohesion and do it in an economically efficient way.

So just looking at the UN goals meant that I had my plan that I could fit into those. So today, after all these years, we have many women empowered as black tourism enterprises in South Africa across many different cultures, offering an incredible new South African experience. And incidentally, it is addressing all the goals. So that was my solution.

Avil Beckford

OK, thank you so much Anthea.

The United Nation's 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to Transform the World

1. No Poverty
2. Zero Hunger
3. Good Health and Well-being
4. Quality Education
5. Gender Equality
6. Clean Water and Sanitation
7. Affordable and Clean Energy
8. Decent Work and Economic Growth
9. Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
10. Reduced Inequality
11. Sustainable Cities and Communities
12. Responsible Consumption and Production
13. Climate Action
14. Life Below Water
15.  Life on Land
16. Peace and Justice Strong Institutions
17. Partnerships to achieve the Goal

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