About us

History

We are Durban was born out of the desire to make real change in Durban. The need appears so large and there appear to be so many organisations doing “good work” and some struggling due to lack of structure, poor management or volunteers. We wanted to get involved with what we had available – access to people who want to help. We do not wish to recreate someone else’s organisation but assist in all ways we can to make their vision happen and stimulate their success in Durban. After years of fine tuning the exact goal was established and We are Durban was formulated and began operating at the beginning of 2011.
From 2011 to 2016 our main aim was to build relationship with organisations and find out their real struggles and victories. This has informed our strategy for this next season.

What we do

We are Durban exists to aid charities in the eThekwini area to reach their potential. We aim at a developmental approach instead of a “relief” type approach.

We do this in the following ways:

1. Charities

Charities are screened and assessed to find out what they are doing. We assess these organisations in 4 categories: business plan, financial recording, marketing programme and Volunteer programme specifically. Our interventions include;
- Sending and monitoring volunteers
- Assisting in organisational structure/strategy by skilled volunteers
- Networking with other charities in the same sector
- Up-skilling through conferences/workshops
- Blessing through events/CSI/Donations – but not covering operational expenditure

2. Volunteers:

Volunteers:
1. Unskilled: Everyone in Durban is free to join us at events that we create once a month (aiming to offer weekly) that highlight different charities across Durban. The aim of these is to give volunteers access to different charities that they potentially can volunteer in.
2. Skilled: Creating a database of skilled professionals to aid charities in need. These are once off connections to overcome a specific problem an charity is facing.

3. Municipality liaison:

Vision

Empowering Social Dignity Organisations to excel in their mandate.

Mission

We serve the Social dignity organisations of Durban to excel their mandates by:

Values:

We value transparency and this is why we have set We are Durban up as a section 21 company that is legally required to be audited annually.
We value the work that other people are doing, and attempting to do, in Durban and want to assist these organisations reach their goals.
We value individuality, and individual’s potential to impact the area in which they live and therefore create individual pathways for people to volunteer
We value the businesses in Durban’s ability to change the face of poverty by providing opportunities to get involved physically as well as through their CSI spend.
We value people’s time by providing opportunities and events that are well planned and researched to create maximum exposure to the areas where volunteers can impact on poverty, social injustices, marginalisation and unemployment.