HOPE Cape Town’s visit to Dallas, USA
June 16th – 21st, 2018
“Interdependent people combine their own efforts, with the efforts of others to achieve their greatest success” – Steven Covey provides a powerful definition encouraging people to pool their talent, resources, and insight for mutual benefit. The results of such joint action are far greater than the results of individual actions taken separately.
Mindful of the above quote and with the aim to build and strengthen existing knowledge, skills and capacity of already active community based organizations in Dallas, Texas – home of the program implementation arm of HOPE Cape Town USA, the Reverend Father Stefan Hippler, founder and chairperson of the HOPE Cape Town Trust and Marlene Whitehead, donor relations manager, journeyed to Dallas to participate in HOPE Cape Town USA’s Board Meeting and AGM.
Well-established initiatives caring for poor and marginalized citizens in Dallas were visited in 2017 and revisited during this period. The discussions were robust and successfully demonstrated how HOPE Cape Town, as an intermediary, can nurture and safeguard action-learning programs to empower organizations to engage more meaningfully in processes geared to improve challenges within their respective communities. All stakeholders were offered the potential to collectively create and utilize participatory opportunities enabled by a range of local and international academic institutions to support young professional capacity building, including the Department of Social Work at Stellenbosch University and Rutgers University School of Social Work, New Jersey, USA.
HOPE Cape Town and HOPE Cape Town USA believe that together they can play a specialized role in facilitating and coordinating the exposure learning opportunities with partner organizations and students. Adopting this strategy will require continued engagement with the identified partners, other tertiary institutions, the public, private and other stakeholders in order to channel the collective efforts and energy into common and constructive directions.
