“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”- J. Krishnamurthi

Statistics show that the Number One thing donors for development fund is CHANGE. As investors in the planet and its people, they realize that something is not right with the world. We have poisoned the planet, not only for future generations, but even for ourselves. Everywhere you look there is debt, destruction and devastation. We are familiar with greed, monopolies and dishonesty. Capitalism only widens the gap between rich and poor and the rich get richer, while the poor get poorer. South Africa is rated as the country with one of the highest levels of economic inequality. Billions of dollars for international aid and development is pumped into the country annually. South African corporates are obliged to donate 1% of their yearly profit to development and many other philanthropists and trusts give generously, year after year, to help right the balance. But what has actually changed?

The United Nations notes that since the golden age of democracy, unemployment has increased, the quality of education in the country continues to be rated on the lower end of international scales, while HIV infection rates continue to soar as people develop new strains of the virus and resistance to drug treatment.

Immersion SA has grown out of years of experience in the non profit sector. Our team has experience raising money from international donors, understanding development trends, seeing where the money goes and measuring impact. We also have experience on the ground, at a grassroots level, where we’ve transported the sick and the dying to empty hospitals, lost friends to AIDS because of bureaucratic systems and had to leave children out of the education projects, because of a lack of funding. There is a common dissatisfaction, among the Immersion SA community, with development work in the traditional sense. It certainly has its place and for many communities and hundreds of people, connecting with NGOs is the only way to a better life. It’s the only way to access the services that are meant to be provided by government. Immersion SA wants things to change quicker and in more sustainable ways. Hand-outs and food parcels, while valuable in the short term, will not help South Africa to take responsibility and rise up. Throwing money at projects and people has little impact if the people are

a) not ready to change and

b) unable to enable that change due to a lack of skills.

Your partnership with and shared vision of Immersion SA, means you support something called social enterprise. Immersion SA is all about social enterprise; a socially driven organization that is driven by profit, but with a triple bottom line: people, planet, profit. We have used a business model that combines a revenue-generating model with a structure that generates social value. Immersion SA is distinct from other companies that might have social benefits as a by-product, in that social upliftment is integral to the success of the business. If the lives of people are not being improved and the environment is not properly managed, then the business cannot succeed. Immersion SA is a more-than-profit company as it distributes is profits equitably, but it goes further by accomplishing its social aim by its very definition and activities. This is the change we want to see in the world and we will achieve it in the following ways:

• Creation of new markets: Businesses create businesses - regular volunteers will increase the steady demand for certain goods and service which tourists need (e.g. buying seafood from local fishermen, buying local craft, eating at the restaurant). In addition, Immersion SA will source all goods and services for its volunteers from providers within the community. The project will also encourage new businesses to form - where a stream of visitors to the area was previously erratic, a constant stream will be a motivating factor for new businesses.

• Scaling up activities: The funds provided to TransCape NPO through Immersion SA will allow the NGO to expand its capacity and its social development programmes. In addition, the capacity provided by the volunteers will further boost the impact of its work in the community. Volunteers will be used to train community members to run projects after their departure.

• Replication: Once this model is up and running in this area, there are a number of other education and health care centres in the surrounding region who have expressed an interest in taking up such a model to support their own work.

• Knowledge and skills transfer: The community will benefit through the knowledge and skills of the volunteers. But the volunteers themselves will benefit hugely from this eye-opening experience. The research shows that the impact of these programmes on volunteers and communities extends well beyond the volunteer’s period of service.

• Self-funded sustainability: Immersion SA’s financial model is for-profit project and self-sustaining so it does not rely on grant or donor funding.