About Us

Our Story

OUR VISION IS TO:

• Facilitate opportunities to acquire skills, to access job and self employment opportunities
• To achieve and maintain a standard of quality hand crafted South African products
• To assist communities to identify marketing opportunities for their products

OUR MISSION IS TO:

• Increase self esteem among people.
• Upskill people and enabling them to earn a living
• Develop trust and relationships as well as creativity

OUR AIMS AND OBJECTIVES ARE TO:

• Successfully train people in various textile craft, sewing, welding, woodwork, and business skills.
• Develop and establish community based craft producers.
• Monitor and mentor the progress and development of the groups trained
• Assist in the development of small size enterprises
• Encourage entrepreneurship development
• Apply quantity of standards to ensure quality control
• Offer trainees access to business and product development training

Embocraft's History

Our organisation was founded in 1986 by Brenda Lock, a housewife living in Botha’s Hill, Durban South Africa. Brenda witnessed the poverty and unemployment in the nearby community of the Valley of 1000 Hills.

She took it upon herself to be a catalyst for change and persuaded 3 local women to attend a sewing class in a disused stable on her property. The following day, 7 women arrived to take the sewing class and by the second week, she had 60 women eager and ready to learn to sew.

Brenda taught the women everything she knew, from basic garment making on a sewing machine to embroidery, patchwork, weaving and dyeing.

Her mission was to provide unemployed people, with little education, the opportunity to learn skills to enable them to earn a living, or secure employment, to help support themselves and their families. To encourage the women who did not have sewing machines, Brenda agreed to buy whatever items they crafted by hand.

Soon she had a stockpile of garments, cushion covers, placemats and bags. The next obvious step was to open a shop, and in 1988 Embocraft a Non-Profit Organisation was born. With funding, Brenda was able to set up a new workshop and showroom in Sugar Loaf Centre in Botha’s Hill.

A Trust was formed and stands today as Embocraft Training Centre Trust. The property from which we operate, is owned by the Trust

In 2001, Lions Club International Foundation sponsored the building of an additional 610 square metres of training facilities on the property.

In 2008, the E. Black Business Centre was opened at Embocraft through the generous sponsorship from Emily Black – an intern from Canada who spent some time with us. It is the Centre in which our Basic computer training and business skills are taught.

Embocraft has a constant stream of requests from people and communities in need of skills training, which requires donor funding. The funding assists us to meet the training needs of the community, promoting job creation and employment.