The Constantia Heritage and Education Project activities are past and future oriented. To honour the past and the visceral baring that history has on the present, we have begun creating an oral history archive, starting with former residents of the Constantia Valley.

Gallery

Creative Art Project

With financial assistance, we shall continue to conduct interviews, facilitate seminars and community learning projects. The organisation is led currently by an ad-hoc committee of former residents and their descendants, who can draw on their personal networks to spur the project forward. In time, we hope to employ student researchers or train unemployed youth in oral history so that they may interview people in their own communities.

Central to our aim is to acquire premises in Constantia where we will curate an exhibition of photographs, stories and artefacts of people who lived in Constantia prior to forced removals. It is our hope that former residents, or perhaps their children, will lead tours and provide learning opportunities for school children, locals and tourists.

As the people of Constantia used traditional farming methods, CHEP will provide courses for youth in food sovereignty and organic farming. This shall provide youth with skills that they may use to grow food for their families, or to combine with entrepreneurial skills to supply local restaurants and coffee shops with organic produce. Through these initiatives, CHEP aims to instil a sense of dignity and purpose among youth who struggle to cope in the current financial climate, with limited jobs and opportunity.