Grootbos Leverages Trust to Develop Local Communities

Grootbos offers a distinctive model that blends luxury travel with impactful community development. While Grootbos Lodge provides guests with unforgettable experiences in a stunning private nature reserve, the Grootbos Foundation works tirelessly to empower the local communities around it. These communities include Gansbaai, Franskraal, Eland, Standford and the many tiny rural villages surrounding these areas.

“Our mission is to build trust with the surrounding communities by providing essential education and upskilling programmes that foster employment and entrepreneurship that will benefit them for years to come, not just right now,” says Phil Murray, General Manager

Communications, Fundraising and Donor Relations at Grootbos Foundation. The Grootbos Foundation’s focus is equipping residents with the tools they need to build a brighter future. They do this through four programmes:

1. The Green Futures Education programme – education initiatives with a core conservation focus that engage with the community and empower individuals to participate in conservation and eco-tourism. These include nationally accredited training courses offered through our Green Futures Horticulture and Life Skills College, our Green Futures indigenous nursery, alien clearing programmes, and indigenous tree planting projects.
2. Green Futures Conservation – These include award-winning ecological research projects, biodiversity surveys and management of human-wildlife conflict within a protected environment.
3. The Football Foundation (established in partnership with the Premier League) – promotes sports and social development in Overberg, an area with high unemployment rates and few educational, and developmental resources or opportunities.
4. Siyakhula benchmark enterprise development and entrepreneurship programme – focuses on early childhood development, food security and unlocking entrepreneurial potential.

Making It Count

However, Phil says that it hasn’t been easy, as they often have to fend for funding. “We have to stay creative and ahead of the curve when it comes to finding funding. If anything goes wrong, we also have to make sure we can ethically manage people’s expectations so the knock-on effect doesn’t impact the most vulnerable people.”

To help with this, Grootbos Foundation has diversified its income streams beyond just donations. “We try not to build reliance on any one funder and remain as flexible as possible,” she explains. It has a gallery that offers tours to the public and sells botanical arts and prints, as well as a nursery where adults can come to learn and buy plants, which generates passive income. “Individually, those don’t raise enough money at all for the programmes, but together they help a lot.”

Sharing The Responsibility

For their work training and facilitating the employment and entrepreneurship of local communities, Grootbos won Gold in the Employment category at the WTMA Responsible Tourism Awards. “This Award was a great honour for us,” she explains. “It means a lot to us to be recognised for our human impact and conservation efforts.”

She adds that communities who don’t feel heard, respected or uplifted can also pose a threat to responsible tourism. “Tourists who travel to these unique tourism destinations want to know they are safe and that the communities are cared for.”

The Grootbos Foundation actively partners with municipalities, NPOs, and other landowners on the private nature reserve (like CapeNature and SANParks) to share the responsibility of conservation and community development.

“We believe there is power in collaborating with people and organisations who are also interested in responsible tourism,” Phil concludes.