Tomorrow, 9 August 2011, is Women’s Day in South Africa – but celebrations started early in Cape Town with Freeworld Design Centre’s fundraising auction for the Safe Spaces campaign, an awareness initiative around the need to create safe environments for young women. On Thursday, 4 August 2011, around 350 people, including City of Cape Town Executive Mayor Patricia de Lille, gathered to show their support for this worthy initiative.

On auction were soccer balls transformed by 46 talented local  designers and creatives into works of art. Participating artists included those well-known, such as political satirist Zapiro; award-winning author Lauren Beukes (the recent recipient of the Arthur C Clarke Award); and Conrad Botes of Bitterkomix fame; as well as up-and-coming, such as Gabrielle Raaff and Francois van Reenen. All were given a (mostly) indestructible soccer ball from Grassroot Soccer – an organisation that uses soccer to educate, inspire, and mobilise communities to stop the spread of HIV – which they then had to redesign as a collectible artwork…

For more information visit capetown2014.co.za

… This initiative seeks to reduce the incidence of violence in characteristcally unsafe areas by creating “safe spaces”. With the help of various artists and designers, women and girls in the community co-create unique benches which are then strategically placed in hand-picked, underprivileged areas and serve to represent a place of refuge for anyone in need.

For each safe space created with its ROCK Girl bench, a “sister” bench is placed in a prominent position within the city. Not only are these identical sister benches a work of art, they also create awareness of the help that is available within such communities.

Travelstart is proud to be a sponsor in this project. Our benches will be placed near our office in Cape Town’s city centre with its sister bench at Thembalitsha’s School of Hope…

The full article is available online travelstart.com