Twelve Challenging Bridges

The following represents just twelve of the many bridges that South African Communities need to build, as a matter of urgency, if we are to achieve communities that are safe, with high employment and prosperous.

1. How to reduce and ultimately eliminate unemployment, poverty and crime? In the article by Desmond Tutu that appeared in the Cape Argus Feb 2009 under the heading “SA sits on a powder keg” - Call for South African ‘Marshall Plan’, Archbishop Tutu is correct in much of what he said. We go further and say that to achieve a South Africa that is safe, with high employment and prosperous, nothing less than the mobilisation of all South Africans, must now begin to take place, to address unemployment, poverty and crime as a matter of urgency (we should have started years ago).
   
2. How to reverse the negative findings of the Global Entrepreneur Monitor (GEM) Report that rates South Africa very low as a country able to create sufficient employment. According to GEM one of a number of reasons is that South Africans lack entrepreneur self-confidence.
   
3. How to enable/equip our communities to generate many more employment opportunities.
   
4. How to fill the leadership void that that would be willing and able to mobilise the community as a whole with a clear vision and plan of action directed towards achieving definite and worthwhile objectives.
   
5. How to bridge the gap for those living in limited resource communities so that they are effectively able to benefit from the larger and stronger community economy.
   
6. How to encourage many more of our people to become job creators instead of job seekers.
   
7. How to harness creative thinking as a definite resource and create new/more industries that would generate more employment opportunities.
   
8. How to narrow the gap between the rich and poor so that there is a future for all who are willing to be part of the solution. In the words of John F. Kennedy: If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.
   
9. How to encourage and guide many more of our youth to make the right choices and to adopt and implement sound core values and ethics as they make their way through life.
   
10. How to encourage a 2-Tier Entrepreneur (Business + Social) as the way forward for existing and new businessmen and women. This change of mindset on a huge scale will see large and positive changes happening in our communities.
    
11. How to effectively mobilise wasted, under-utilised and volunteered resources and then direct these resources towards achieving the maximum results while encouraging all to be resourceful.
    
12. How to mobilise all to address the serious challenge of global warming and the life threatening impact it will have on South Africa.

The challenge will be to build the many bridges required to address all of the above, at a rate fast and large enough, that begins to show definite results which in turn encourages the willing and growing participation of many more, so that our communities grow strong in their ability to provide much more employment, reduce poverty and crime as well as be ready, as a unified body, to take on future challenges.