Real Guide to Cape Town A-Z comment count

• News
• April 20, 2010 ∥
• By Roy Barford

A lady selling The Big Issue in Cape Town. Photo courtesy Anastacia Haddon

A gatsby from Mariam’s Kitchen, your favourite wine farm along the Durbanville Wine Route, the best spot to buy antique furniture, your kids’ favourite play park … this week it’s all about your Cape Town. 

Cape Town Tourism has partnered with magazine The Big Issue to produce an “A-Z Guide of Your Cape Town” to be included as a special insert in the 2010 FIFA World Cup™ edition of The Big Issue; available for three weeks from June 11 2010.

The Big Issue is a non-profit job creation and development organisation that publishes a general interest magazine sold by vendors who are unemployed and homeless and who have been excluded from mainstream society. Parallel to this, The Big Issue offers a social development programme of vendor support, vocational, life and business skills training and guidance counselling, which aids vendors to move back into mainstream society. Critical to its job creation function is The Big Issue philosophy that actively encourages and equips vendors to “move on” from the project and into the formal job sector. 

Cape Town Tourism and The Big Issue are going to use the guide to show our visitors how to do it lekker like a local. The project aims to give The Big Issue vendors and their families the opportunity to benefit from the 2010 FIFA World Cup™ through boosting their income over the period by capturing the interest of foreign tourists, who already support the street magazine model in their own countries and recognise the brand. It will provide visitors with a novel way to see a local’s view of Cape Town. In addition, The Big Issue vendors are well-placed to be informal tourism ambassadors, with a local, inside knowledge of the city that many visitors to Cape Town seek. 

Cape Town Tourism saw this project as an ideal element of our Live it. Love it. LOUDER! campaign, which engenders a sense of pride in our city and excitement around hosting the World Cup.

Each week, from March 29 until May 10, three topics will be launched, inviting the public to submit their favourite experiences and attractions in Cape Town. Each topic will be run for two days on social networking sites Facebook and Twitter. Join The Big Issue group on http://www.facebook.com, or follow it on Twitter on @BigIssueSA. Send your tips via direct message or direct reply, or send by email to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

Please label your entry ‘A-Z Guide’ and remember that your suggestions must be appropriate for winter! 

The topics for the Real Guide to Cape Town A-Z are:

• 1. Kids, teen and family activities, events and attractions.
• 2. Sports and hobbies.
• 3. Green Cape Town: eco-products, markets, sustainable living projects, eco-attractions, etc.
• 4. Local food/delicacies, takeaways and bakeries.
• 5. Restaurants and wineries.
• 6. Markets, fairs, galleries, arts and crafts.
• 7. Pubs, bars, clubs and live music venues.
• 8. Comedy, music and book clubs.
• 9. “Pink” Cape Town – gay interest.
• 10. Responsible tourism, volunteerism and community support.
• 11. Cape Town mahala – what to do for free
• 12. Heritage: natural (walks, hikes, beaches, nature and marine reserves, etc.) and cultural (museums, places of historical interest, churches, mosques, temples etc.)

The special World Cup edition of The Big Issue will be a 68-page magazine and will include stories on the impact of the World Cup on the nation’s spirit, positive spin-offs for grassroots entrepreneurs, women’s soccer, new soccer-based non-governmental organisations that have sprung up around the World Cup, responsible tourism during the event and how Cape Town’s kids see the World Cup. Remember to get your copy of The Big Issue in June 2010!  The magazine costs just R14; the change is in your pocket and in somebody else’s life. 

For more information on this project and the attractions in the Mother City, visit http://www.capetown.travel, or call +21 (0) 21 487 6800.