PROGRAMME
KOEKSISTER
Build. Renew. Thrive.
Sweet, sticky, and made with care just like the treat, the Koeksister Programme brings coastal communities together, braiding skills, heritage, and hope into something that sustains generations.
The Koeksister Programme is a community-led initiative rooted in South Africa. Named after the beloved South African treat sweet, sticky, and braided with care it reflects something deeper than its name. It is about people coming together, braiding, heritage, struggles, and ambitions into something that sustains communities for generations. It’s braided form represents the coming together of three concepts; doughnut economics, transition towns and commoning. Creating platforms for community resilience, ecological stewardship and local economic development.
At its core, the Programme is a civic and economic resilience network, that supports small-scale fishers, women’s groups, youth, traditional knowledge holders, environmental advocates, indigenous communities, entrepreneurs, and municipal representatives across West Coast, Northern Cape, and Garden Route. Through skills development, peer-to-peer learning, advocacy, and community enterprise support, Koeksister helps coastal communities strengthen livelihoods while protecting the ecosystems and cultural heritage that sustain them.
The Story
The Koeksister Programme started with a simple idea: communities already hold the knowledge, skills, and solutions needed to address many of their challenges. What is often missing are opportunities to connect, collaborate, and amplify those efforts. Across the Western Cape and Northern Cape, the programme has played an important role in turning community challenges into connected movements. Through workshops, information-sharing sessions, business training, inter-community exchanges, and advocacy support, communities have been introduced to the Koeksister model and connected to wider networks of support and opportunity.
The programme has reached over 162 individuals across more than 14 coastal areas, including 7 fishing cooperatives, 3 women’s groups, 1 youth group, and 13 municipal ward representatives. It has partnered with over 30 organisations from Masifundise and the Heinrich Böll Foundation, African Climate Foundation, Doughnut Economics Action Lab, Adaptation Network,Abalobi, and the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment.
What We Do
Deliver Basic Business Training covering budgeting, planning, marketing, and compliance. But training is only the beginning. We don’t stop at certificates. Communities receive ongoing support to develop business plans, strengthen financial management, improve market access, and build sustainable local enterprises. Through a multiplier approach, participants share their knowledge and experience with others, ensuring that skills continue to grow, spread, and create opportunities throughout their communities.
Carry community concerns to Parliament, the High Court, and the Human Rights Commission. From court cases against oil and gas to fighting red dust pollution and unfair fishing policies, Koeksister makes sure coastal voices are heard where decisions are made.
Organise inter-community excursions and peer learning exchanges. A fisher in Port Nolloth learns from a co-op in Mossel Bay. Women in Langebaan teach knitting to workers in Lamberts Bay. Knowledge travels hand to hand, community to community. Koeksister has facilitated peer exchanges between Aukotowa and Mossel Bay, between Women on the Go and Lamberts Bay, and between Port Nolloth youth and elders.
From traditional net-making and leather finger laps to indigenous plant medicine and Rastafari cultural practices, Koeksister has helped keep living knowledge alive by connecting elders with youth, and tradition with tomorrow.
- Arnold Mattheus teaches youth to make and repair nets.
- The Rastafarian Committee in Mossel Bay passes down healing plant knowledge.
- The late Aunt Solene Smith’s legacy lives on through Women on the Go.
Koeksister supports communities to engage with policy and hold power to account. This includes community engagement processes, gas-to-power education, oil and gas awareness campaigns, and submissions to the South African Human Rights Commission investigations into food systems. Additionally Koeksister pushes for meaningful participation rather than token consultation.
Koeksister supports community food gardens, urban gardening, backyard farming, wild fig replanting, and waste-to-art initiatives. Along with linking feeding schemes to local produce and promote environmental stewardship through beach clean-ups, coastal monitoring, and creative murals envisioning a green economy. Such initiatives helps strengthen food security and local livelihoods.
Koeksister Videos
Programme Team Members
With your partnership, the Koeksister Programme can keep weaving together ecological rehabilitation, social justice, and economic resilience, turning more isolated challenges into strength within communities.