So I do not have a proper definition per se, but I would say that as a social entrepreneur, my focus is on the development and or the impact that I drive within my community.

We want to ensure that people have access to mobility. How can we achieve that in a community that has quite a huge unemployment rate, that has quite a number of social challenges?

Our plan was to tap into the networks that we have. We've pretty much approached a number of government agencies, of which some actually helped us. We then thought, “Let's go to to the community, the cycling community”.

Currently, we're in our first phase. The first phase is to establish a bicycle shop in the workshop. The whole bike hub is divided into three phases, and we're actually about to open our first store at the end of September.

We’re pretty much familiar with our purpose, in terms of what we want to achieve and what we want to do and why we exist. I think that the biggest challenge that we are currently facing as a small business is capacity. We only have three directors and two of them are actually working full time on other projects. As a company, we're not yet at the point for them to jump over full time so you find that our time is divided into different things and I'm pretty much solely within the business now.

The rude awakening we got is that nothing ever starts perfect. You've got to start somewhere. I think of where we started, I mean we went to organisations such as the National Empowerment Fund, for example, to get funding from them.

I'll speak on my behalf. I think what I did wrong was not getting the necessary help that I needed in the beginning. I said, "You know what? I can do this myself because I have a degree in business administration. I know how to put a business together and I know how to ensure that I comply with everything." 

I think without those partners, to be honest with you, Khaltsha Cycles would not even be there. There's something that we miss in creating partnerships and it starts with loyalty. It's the ability to have frank conversations with your partners, while at the same time having visions that are aligned together. You complement one another.

When we perceive someone as a partner, we look into quite a number of things. We look at whether we share the same goals. What is it that they would like to achieve that we can assist them with? How do we tick their boxes? I think that's an quite important thing that has come out strongly for us.

We started Khaltsha Cycles in 2019 and the vision behind it came when I became an Avalanche ambassador. That inspired me to come back to Khayelitsha and really drive a culture of cycling. For me personally, cycling started when I was seven and I used to take my BMX to school.