Leading Women toward Self-Sufficiency, Anthea Rossouw – Summer Interview Series

Leading Women toward Self-Sufficiency, Anthea Rossouw – Summer Interview Series

Last week, I decided that for the months of  July and August, each week, I will take one of the interviews from my book,  Tales of People Who Get It, and post it on the blog so that you may learn from some of the interviewees. This week we feature Anthea Rossouw who developed a program to help South African women to become economically self-sufficient. Although interviewees may be doing different things now, their words still hold the wisdom they did seven years ago. I am calling the eight interviews, the Summer Series Interviews.

Anthea Rossouw

Related: Living an Authentic Life – Gabriel Draven, Summer Series Interviews

In 2007, I published my book, Tales of People Who Get It, which is based on interviews with successful people. The Invisible Mentor blog was born of my book. Let’s take a step back in time to the fall of 2007, I had been thinking about ways to market Tales of People Who Get It and hoping for a burst of inspiration. While I was taking a walk in High Park in Toronto, it popped into my consciousness that Tales of People Who Get It was my Board of Invisible Mentors. What happened, without being aware of it, is that when I faced a problem, I would remember parts of interviews that I had conducted, and would know how to solve that problem. After conducting research, The Invisible Mentor blog was born, and five years later the concept of the invisible mentor has changed.

One of the reasons people say why they love Tales of People Who Get It is that the interviewees are ordinary people so they can see themselves in them. If the interviews resonate with you, consider purchasing your copy of  Tales of People Who Get It because there are over 30 interviews included. Seven years later, I am a better writer, and there are things that I would do differently today with the book, but I took a chance to put my work out to the world!

~Challenge~

Starting Dreamcatcher was a challenge in itself, considering that everything that I do is centered on something that has never been done before in South Africa. I harnessed the women in disadvantaged communities across South Africa in an effort to put “an end to aid without end,” to put an end to poverty, and bring long-term solutions to their own future. Convincing these women – who had no confidence in themselves to run their own business – to identify with the project, and develop their own micro businesses, using available resources, was a challenge.

In South Africa, those who controlled and ran businesses in the travel and tourism industry before the end of apartheid are still reaping the lion’s share of the income generated from the industry. Ninety-nine percent of these people are those who never had contact with the culture on a social or business level. Therefore, the women along with their cultures in their communities across South Africa are strangers to them. Culture was not sold as an important tourism product, and the animals and safaris have always been over-emphasized. So, people who were not into the animal-safari sector did not understand that the people living among these animals were the custodians of these environments.

Leading Women toward Self-Sufficiency – Anthea Rossouw

People then, and today, are skeptical and do not see the significance of involving the local communities as BUSINESSMEN & WOMEN in their own right. These BUSINESSMEN & WOMEN hold the key to a long-term plan for saving tourism in South Africa, generating an income through enterprises because they understand the importance of the women in their communities.

Another major challenge was expanding tourism in all regions, as well as developing the businesses surrounding tourism. This meant to enhance the tourism experience in South Africa with authentic cultural contacts in community accommodation, cuisine, and craft, which would benefit the women in the communities and foster their children’s development.

~Resolution~

I overcame the major challenge by taking the authentic cultural experiences, and the women entrepreneurs who would benefit directly from it, into the marketplace to create awareness in the tourist market. I developed very basic human interactive tourism and travel experiences to rebuild communities, pride and the local economy. For each $100 a micro entrepreneur earns, the return is five-fold. When you are poor you do not need bags of money to sustain yourself. It’s when you are rich that you do!

A challenge is only a challenge when you do not see an end with an outcome. If I had been intimidated by the challenge, Dreamcatcher would not have materialized. In a challenge, you look for the opportunities. The thought of NOT doing this does not cross my mind. There is no other alternative to long-term poverty alleviation in the communities across South Africa and in Southern Africa.

~Lessons Learned~

1. Do not rely on politicians to effect change when it comes to economic empowerment. Political liberation never ensures economic liberation from poverty.
2. Don’t take no for an answer and be passionate about making a difference.
3. You have to look for like-minded people, create a network, and then you can make a difference and make it work together in a strategic partnership.
4. Travel and tourism can be the biggest liberator of poverty because it’s the world’s biggest industry, and it’s completely people-based. If you can get to the people who spend their money on travel, you can direct them to spend their money where it will make a difference.
5. Do not accept the way things have been done. Travel and tourism have been controlled by “mass” and “bus window” tourism experiences, and that’s the way most mainstream travel agencies are run. They are not interested in spreading the benefits at grassroots.
6. It will help us little in Africa to try to save the environment, the rhinos and the elephants, if people who are the custodians, do not benefit from these actions. Destitute people do not understand the need to preserve the forest if they are hungry, or they look the other way when they are enticed to poach, or become involved in clandestine activities when offered money.
7. To build a better Africa and world, we should not alienate the local people, or prevent them from interacting with tourists. World peace and harmonious coexistence are directly linked to the attitudes of people. We cannot talk of being safe in our homes from an elevated comfort zone, or being safe during our holiday, or in our business, when we ignore the impact of tourism on people.

~How to Integrate Your Personal and Professional Life~

I believe in any human interaction that will create a better world. The human contact with my family and the quality time that I spend with them is the same as the quality time that I spend with the many women I work with. I am not a different person when I am with family than when I am with others. There is no difference between the two. I’m not two people. It’s too difficult to be that way! My family supports everything that I do and I support them. I make time for introspection with my family and when I do so, I like to retreat into nature. Peace descends on me when I am outside in nature, and the environment gives me strength. It gives me the strength and energy to interact with people on both the personal and professional level. When I watch the trees and hear the breeze, I know that there is a bigger purpose.

~Formula for Success~

Commitment! You have to believe in what you are doing and be committed to it, because your desires lead to deeds, which lead to your destiny.

~Major Regret~

I should have started 20 years ago spreading my message of hope and the alleviation of poverty, instead of waiting for people with vested interests in the status quo to help me get the message out. Only when I realized that I had to take my message directly to the people outside South Africa did I see that an end is possible.

A defining moment for me was when I was almost a victim of 9/11. I changed my flight from the one that went into the north tower a few days before the tragedy. I was scheduled to give a talk to a group in California when I realized that my time with them would be too short so I changed my flight and flew to Dallas. That decision changed my life. I spent six days travelling on trains and buses all over the United States trying to get back to South Africa. During that time, seeing people in their darkest moments of fear, I realized that the fear was not only a fear of terrorists, but also lack of knowledge of other cultures and about each other. I realized that my purpose was written all over the fear and heartache I experienced in America. I had a mission to build peace through human contact for cultural harmony. That was the moment, all alone with no food on a train full of fearful people that I made the decision to reach out with our Kamammas (community matriarchs). I was now going to take this message of hope to empower the women with micro businesses, foster micro businesses between cultures and share my passion for a better life for the many poor women and their destitute children whom I have met in all the years of Apartheid.

~Favourite Quote~

I like “We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny, whatever affects one directly, affect all indirectly” by Martin Luther King (Inspired by Gandhi) and “We are made to live together because of the interrelated structure of reality” by Martin Luther King because I identify with them and they relate to life’s realities. “If we don’t learn from history, we will repeat it,” my incredible mother always said. What happens in one country, impacts other countries. We are bound by mutual destiny. I can make a difference by becoming involved in the destiny of the world. You work locally, but think globally.

~Influential Book~

Two books have made a major difference to my life:

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes both by Maya Angelou (The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou (Modern Library)). In I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, the central message for my situation is, that if women are caged in by poverty and all the terrible social evils in their community, do they shrivel up and die because of these given circumstances? Or, do they use their hospitality and their humanity and their skills to welcome, to reach out and to be heard outside? And in so doing create their own destiny and a better life. Poor Mr. Nelson Mandela – he is still seeing so much of a “bitter life” instead of the “better life” he dreamed about for our country. It is a great feeling to know that this incredible patriarch needs me to bring that dream to fruition, just as my children and I needed him to fight for the end of Apartheid. Do you see the mutuality? We need to bring people into South Africa to share our rich culture. A woman can make a difference even if she finds herself caged in her poor community. She has herself. No one can take that from her – only herself.

In the case of All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes, only when people travel to South Africa and see how they can reach out via their travels, can we make a difference. We need to take the Kamammas, and help them to don their travelling shoes, so that they can tell their stories and “put an end to aid without end”.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Liked this post? Share it and subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more! If you’re new to the blog, visit the Start Here page for my pillar posts.

Author Bio: Avil Beckford, an expert interviewer, entrepreneur and published author is passionate about books and professional development, and that’s why she founded The Invisible Mentor and the Virtual Literary World Tour to give you your ideal mentors virtually in the palm of your hands by offering book reviews and book summaries, biographies of wise people and interviews of successful people. Connect with me on Facebook and Twitter.

Book links are affiliate links.