Brownies&downieS Cape Town

> History

Brownies & downieS started in 2010 in Veghel, the Netherlands, because of an idea that twofriends had. The one a chef (Teun Horck) the other working at a special needs school (Thijs Swinkels). They realised over a time that not many people with disabilities were employed in the hospitality sector, and decided to change this. Using a combination of high quality food and staff members with an intellectual disability in their employ, they created a relatively new concept in the Netherlands and surrounding European countries. Since those early days, they have grown by close to 30 stores in the Netherlands.

> So how did this idea come to Cape Town?

A young lady named Wendy Vermeulen came over from the Netherlands, completed her social work internship in South Africa during 2010, and decided to stay in this beautiful city upon completion of her degree. Just like the two founders, Wendy realised that there are not many facilities for people with an intellectual disability in South Africa, who go to school until age eighteen, at which point opportunities for employment after school drop dramatically. She found some protective workshops and sheltered employment facilities, but not many, and not even close to enough. But more urgent was her realisation that the assumptions and fear of the public to interact with people with intellectual disabilities was misplaced. After all, she experienced first-hand how the employees with special needs back home blossomed, and how the customers and public became more comfortable and open to treating people with special needs the same as anyone else. So she decided to take this concept to Cape Town.