While the events of the week of 12 July have been a dark chapter in the country’s history as homes and businesses were destroyed, the #rebuildSA movement has become a rallying point for community stakeholders – including Kandua.com, South Africa’s largest home services platform.
“With our network of 25,000 small construction businesses throughout the country, and a platform to connect them to whatever jobs need doing, we realised we could massively multiply the impact of communities organic efforts to draw together and rebuild," said Arjun Khoosal, co-founder and CTO of Kandua.
As a result, Kandua set up a crowdfunding page to raise funds to repair small businesses and key community services that were affected by the unrest. Within a single day the campaign raised over R100,000 from sources across the country and the world. A partner of Kandua, Leroy Merlin, one of the largest hardware retailers globally, pledged a large donation of materials to support the rebuilding efforts. Kandua’s campaign aims to leverage the company’s strengths as a matchmaker for service providers and those who need work done on their homes or businesses.
Once specific projects are identified, the crowd-raised funds will be used to employ local service providers such as builders and electricians to do the work, further catalysing the local economy after the deep shock of the unrest.
To ensure that funds are allocated fairly, priority is given to businesses that meet the following two criteria:
- How critical is the business to satisfying immediate needs of a community?
- To what extent is the business able to recover without support?
Kandua hopes to continue to raise funds and support key community services as long as the rebuilding efforts continue. Arjun Khoosal says that “Everyone can contribute. Whether it's with your wallet or with your WhatsApp contact list. Visit rebuild.kandua.com to see how you can join others in the community to help repair the damage and support the affected neighbourhoods”.
The rebuilding efforts will be a long road, however this last week has shown that together South African’s can overcome the most trying times.