Keiskamma Canada Foundation

Edmonton, Alberta

Stronger Together

What is the donation supporting?
The creation of a monumental artwork in response to COVID-19 that provides a livelihood for 55 breadwinners, per month, for six months.

Where is the support provided?
Hamburg, Eastern Cape, South Africa

Why is the support needed?
To provide children and adults with the means to share their stories, to illuminate both the ordinary and extraordinary, the battles of the most vulnerable dealing with intolerable challenges.

About Us

The Keiskamma Canada Foundation, based in Edmonton, Alberta, has worked to raise awareness of the work of The Keiskamma Trust, an organization that supports communities in the Eastern Cape of South Africa, that still struggle in the face of endemic poverty, social injustice, and the HIV/AIDS pandemic. 

The Keiskamma Canada Foundation have built a community of volunteers and supporters in Edmonton that have been active for over ten years, providing opportunities for people to purchase the beautiful handmade embroideries for which the Trust is so renowned.  

About the Campaign

The Keiskamma Art Project in the village of Hamburg, Eastern Cape, has been the voice piece for the vulnerable communities living alongside the Keiskamma River for twenty years now.

Covid-19 has wounded our landscape and threatens the critical livelihoods that as an Art Project, we have been able to provide. In the past few weeks, in our villages, not only has informal work been impossible, hunger has escalated, with no breadwinners able to earn a small, but vital income. Local government is overwhelmed by the crisis and even food, a basic human right, is not reaching remote locations such as Hamburg.

Our response to Covid-19 is not about struggle, but resilience. 

We are asking you to join with us in creating a monumental artwork in response to this crisis that provides a livelihood for 55 breadwinners, per month, for six months. During this process, we have the network to mobilize ourselves as a team to provide education about this health crisis, only in its infancy. Supported by colleagues in health and education through our umbrella Keiskamma Trust, we will collect crucial documentation about the realities of households affected not only by the Covid19 crisis but by the historical neglect of a very precious area of our country. 

We can provide children and adults with the means to share their stories, to illuminate both the ordinary and extraordinary, the battles of the most vulnerable dealing with intolerable challenges. Our artwork of these integrated experiences will also become the story of how, working collectively, and in community, we can overcome. Art is something collective, that we can work towards and see. It is powerful. It gives visibility and voice to those deemed invisible.

We need to raise R76 000 per month (approx: $6500 CAD) to support the Keiskamma artists and project, totalling R456 000 (approx $39,000 CAD) over 6 months to complete our monumental artwork.

Read about how Keiskamma is responding during COVID-19.