A shop with a difference, bringing hope to the lives of people with intellectual disabilities, recently opened in Cape Town. The first of its kind in South Africa, Brownies and Downies, will be run as a non-profit organisation; additionally it will provide training opportunities for people with intellectual disabilities and special needs to become employable in the hospitality, service and retail sectors.
Brownies and Downies is employing 23 staff aged between 15 and 37. Their conditions include Down’s syndrome, foetal alcohol syndrome and autism.
The shop is based on a Dutch concept launched by chef Teun Horck and Thijs Swinkels, who worked in a special-needs school. They noticed that very few people with disabilities were employed in the hospitality sector; they decided to set up shops to provide jobs for special needs people and now there are close to 30 such shops in the Netherlands. The idea was brought to Cape Town by a Dutch social worker Wendy Vermeulen.
Read more about this great venture here
Source (image and text) : South Africa Times ( http://www.timeslive.co.za/)
