Corporate Gifts with a Conscience provides unique gifts for promotions, birthdays, functions, launches,
invitations and team building, to name a few. We strive to meet the clients’ needs and have included
a variety of items on the website that will inspire you. We have not included items made for specific
companies as we treat each order with confidentiality, and make sure your gifts “stand out” from all your
competitors and are unique.
Please contact us for ideas and samples. No minimum orders.We can wrap each gift to your
requirements. We have sourced items from HIV programmes, shelters, self employed crafters , job
creation groups and are constantly updating our product range. We can provide you with information on
who has benefited from each gift and all gifts can have a label with this information.
Enjoy your voyage in celebrating South African craft and creating employment opportunities and a better
quality of life for South Africans.
When Helene Bourquin decided to take six months off work to try and assist street children in CAPE TOWN, she did not know that it would lead to the establishment of a unique venture that would contribute towards job creation in the Western Cape.
While meeting with people at various shelters, she discovered that there were many talented people from disadvantaged local communities who were making handcrafted items, but struggling to get orders for their products.
Knowing that most businesses send their clients corporate gifts, and that these are often virtually indistinguishable from each other, Helene hit on the idea of offering exclusive corporate gifts made by these craftspeople.
She began approaching companies and showing them samples of innovative products, and found several eager to give their support to workers who were striving to help themselves - and producing good quality, useful items to boot.
Spurred on by the enthusiastic response, Helene gave up her partnership in a successful recruitment consultancy to concentrate on developing the self-help programme - and Corporate Gifts with a Conscience was born.
She decided to start small so that she could test the waters in terms of the number of orders received and the sustainability of the business. In the past six months her company has grown considerably through word of mouth referral, and in the process she has sourced reliable and professional craftspeople who are brimming over with ideas.
The gifts range from handcrafted candles, produced by a Bredasdorp business that started out in a kitchen and now employs 350 people, to traditional Ndabele art made by unemployed people living in a township outside Table View.
There are handmade leather products, toys and gifts made out tin cans, paper clips attached to logos shaped in wire, handmade stationery produced from shredded computer paper, wire nametag holders, and stunning bracelets made of safety pins and beads, to name a few. Food and wine baskets contain homebaked products made at a shelter for girls. Even the wine has a social conscience, as it is produced only on wine farms where labourers have been given a share of the land.
Every item can be branded with the client's logo in wire or beadwork, and each comes with a note telling the recipient about the craftsperson that made it, and how its purchase has helped to support a particular community.
The gifts make both corporates and recipients feel great, Helene says. Almost every person who received a Christmas gift has e-mailed or written to thank the company that gave them the present.
Helene is constantly approached by new craftspeople eager for her assistance in marketing their products, as well individuals keen to support the project.
She is bursting with plans for the future and hopes eventually to expand her business nationally and internationally, but not just yet. She wants to encourage corporates to promote local talent, rather than rely on overseas markets.
Excited about her newfound business, she says: It's nice to be able to go to work and know youíre doing something good. When I get a good order, itís not about money, it's about putting food on someone's table, getting their child back, or opening another shelter.
The Argus