Eyethu Sonke Le B-BBEE Campaign
The National Empowerment Fund (NEF) and the Department: Trade & Industry (the dtic) along with other strategic partners embarked on a campaign titled “Eyethu Sonke le BEE”. The Rationale for the campaign was to assist in defining the Soul of Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment in order to ensure that it has economic substance and that it filters down to the intended beneficiaries.
The campaign aims to do the following:
To communicate basic information about broad based black economic empowerment to the people at the grass-root level of the South African economy
To provide an engagement platform to interact on a regular basis with the intended or targeted beneficiaries
To provide governments departments and corporate entities a platform to communicate what is the best way for SMEE’s to access procurement and enterprise development opportunities on a sustainable basis
To market and communicate to the targeted beneficiaries in the eleven languages and in a manner that is easily understandable to ensure maximum benefits and impact
The role players in the Eyethu Sonke Le Campaign:
The dtic and the NEF were the project custodians. The campaign was facilitated by an independent company, Africa Empowered.
Structure of the workshops
The campaign went into all the nine provinces. Eyethu Sonke workshops were held in groups of around 200 attendees at various venues. The attendees comprised mainly owners of small black owned enterprises who were in need of information on BEE. The workshops were split into different sessions, during which govt. entities, development and funding institutions, representatives of big business and entrepreneurs were allowed an opportunity to deliver on presentations on various aspects of BEE. Each workshop had an interactive session facilitated by Africa Empowered. The attendees were part of a feedback session, their comments, successes and frustrations were captured. All the material collated continues to influence the agenda and Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment discourse.
