STEEP

The Swellendam Tourism Economic Empowerment Project, or STEEP for short, is a Jobs Fund project originated and implemented by Swellendam Tourism Organisation (STO)

The project was conceived in 2012, awarded in 2014 and commenced in January 2015. It has a term of 3 years, until December 2017.

The project is designed to deliver on the mandate of National Treasury’s Jobs Fund, which is a challenge fund tasked with uncovering and supporting innovative projects that show promise in catalysing economic growth and jobs as well as transformation and systemic change in priority areas and economic sectors.

The viability and credibility of the project logic and the organisation and key people behind it were subjected to more than a year of due diligence by National Treasury and the DBSA before the award was made.

STEEP has four main focus areas:

1) Job Creation through Workplace Skills Development, mainly in SMMEs connected to the Tourism Industry;

2) Enterprise Development in the above sphere;

3) Transformation and Diversification of the racial profile of those involved in tourism, through new black-empowered tourism offerings; thereby mainstreaming black people into the industry; and

4) Responsible and Sustainable local tourism economy; through;

a) enhanced and joined-up Destination Marketing, focused on linking mainstream tourism with emerging black-empowered tourism activities and suppliers of goods and services, and

b) piloting a new way of making best use of tourism and recreational facilities under the curatorship of the municipality; these are often degraded and ineffectively managed due to the financial pressures on municipalities deriving from the necessary focus on basic services.