Within its short gallop into the public domain, Imagine Durban has spread its wings to one of Durban’s largest inner-city suburbs, Chatsworth, home of more than 300 000 people and an economic oasis underlined by spaza shops and big-brand stores.

“Imagine Chatsworth has been inspired by the recent campaigns of Imagine Durban to create a better, safer and accessible city,” co-ordinator Clive Pillay told a gathering of hundreds of youth representatives and community-based stakeholders at the inaugural launch at the Chatsworth Youth Centre during the run-up to the festive season.

The newly-launched forum is aimed at harnessing youth support, talent and skills in a major residential and business belt plagued by unemployment, crime, domestic violence, teenage pregnancy and the widespread abuse of alcohol and drugs, including an alarming and growing drug dependency among schoolchildren.

Imagine Chatsworth wants to turn the tide against the social stigma that has blighted Chatsworth, one of the early Group Areas Act townships that were designed for the Indian community.

Today, however, Chatsworth is a growing cosmopolitan inner-city with some remarkable success stories where the social and economic complexion ranges from the local people to corporate brands.

Imagine Chatsworth has targeted the youth as its forerunners in a fresh campaign to bolster public awareness in critical issues such as global warming, climate change, ecotourism, safer cities, energy-saving and the promotion of cultural diversity, arts and heritage.

Many stakeholders believes that Chatsworth, spread over a dozen suburbs reflecting the old and new architecture, including the pinnacle beauty of the Hare Krishna Temple, enriched by a cacophony of people, sights and sounds boasts the untapped potential for international and local tourism and unique shopping experiences where eastern and western tapestry criss-crosses each other.

Imagine Chatsworth will begin encouraging residents and people living in the city’s southern suburbs to shop locally to boost the local economy and create more local jobs, especially among the previously disadvantaged people living on the suburban fringes in informal housing settlements in squalid conditions in Chatsworth.

In the offing is the launch of a website and a forum to bring together organisations to begin networking and engaging each other in dialogue.

“We have invited every club, organisation, school or any other structure in Chatsworth to submit information to be put onto a website that will act as a directory for people to access. Pages will be created for every organisation to showcase their calendar of events, activities, photographs and news-updates. Organisations with their own website will be linked to the Imagine Chatsworth website,” added Pillay.

The Imagine Chatsworth Forum, representatives of different formations, will formulate a short and long term vision for Chatsworth: “As a community, we will start imagining how we would want Chatsworth to be in 10 or 20 years time. To imagine where we want to be in the future. It is also about realising that the choices we make today will affect our children and grandchildren tomorrow.”

An Imagine Chatsworth Volunteer Base will also be created as a data-base of potential volunteers with differing skills to assist sister organisations to tap into this base to identify people that can help to make Chatsworth a better place to live in.

Addressing participants, Jacquie Subban, the city’s Head of the Geographic and Information Policy Unit, urged communities to “think beyond the five-year period” and to help Imagine Durban to address issues of long-term sustainability.

“Schoolchildren and the youth are excellent ambassadors to raise the public awareness on issues because they are positive and they will talk about progress while adults complain only about crime. Schools are the best platforms.”

“We want the youth to produce documents to give us ideas, goals and objectives and to discuss and communicate information; education and awareness, especially about the energy crisis, electricity saving and the environment. This responsibility does not belong to the state or city government only, but every individual and community-based social, sports and religious organisations, and particularly schools, should play a big role in our awareness campaign.”

“Imagine Durban is a process that is mobilising government ,non-government, civil society organisations, faith based groups, tertiary institutions, business organisations and ordinary citizens to imagine what we want our city to be like in the future and to create a path to begin taking us there today,” Subban added.

Imagine Chatsworth was also supported by the KZN Department of Economic Development, Satyagraha, and Government Communications and Information Services.

Imagine Chatsworth becoming an inner-city Mecca of homegrown tourism, cultural cacophony and social cohesion in years to come.

• Click here to view the photographs on Flickr ...  

Comments (5)