2026 has been a busy and exciting year for Dreamcatcher South Africa NPC. Across our enterprises, community programmes and environmental initiatives, we’ve continued to welcome international visitors, support local children, strengthen partnerships and celebrate the people, culture and heritage of communities where we work. Here’s a snapshot of what we’ve been up to so far:
🌍 Growing our Social Enterprises
Our Homestay and CookUp Kamammas™ have welcomed guests from around the world, with more international groups visiting later this year. We’re delighted to have multiple bookings confirmed for 2027. As well as these visitors supporting Dreamcatcher enterprises and their local communities, the bespoke itineraries we prepare, benefit the wider economy.
🏡 A New Home
We’ve settled into our new Dreamcatcher Home Office in the heart of Melkhoutfontein—a welcoming space that enables us to expand our programmes and strengthen our engagement with the local community and visitors.
🌈 Supporting Dreamcatcher Kids
For more than 20 years, supporting local children has remained at the heart of Dreamcatcher’s work. Multiple times each week, and throughout the school holidays, our Melkhoutfontein Home Office provides a safe and nurturing environment where children can learn, develop cognitive skills, play, enjoy nutritious meals and simply be children.
Through visits from international families and volunteers, many of our young people are also building confidence, improving their English language skills and forming lasting friendships that broaden their horizons and create meaningful cultural exchange.
📚 Working with Schools
Our partnership with Melkhoutfontein Primary School now spans more than two decades. Earlier this year we once again delivered our popular Kick Up Kamamma™ classes, continuing our commitment to inspiring creativity, learning and personal development. We also donated story and workbooks. This builds on last year where our Oop hok musical raised funds and resources for the school.
🌱 Growing Food, Growing Futures
Our organic food garden continues to flourish, providing fresh produce for the Dreamcatcher Kids programme and meals for visiting guests while demonstrating the value of sustainable food production.
🎓 New Partnerships
We were delighted to collaborate with students from the University of Sussex (UK) through the Career Lab programme, helping generate new ideas and opportunities to strengthen and grow Dreamcatcher’s work.
♻️ Turning Waste into Opportunity
Waste continues to be transformed into opportunity across our projects. Our Made in Melkhoutfontein crafters create beautiful, practical products from discarded materials, demonstrating the value of creativity and the circular economy.
We’re also continuing to champion household food waste composting across Melkhoutfontein. Monitoring of 25 households has shown that each family using a Green Johanna composter diverts an average of 190 kg of food waste from landfill every year. This reduces greenhouse gas emissions, produces nutrient-rich compost to grow food at home, improves soil health and demonstrates how simple community-led circular economy initiatives can deliver lasting environmental, social and economic benefits.
🎨 Celebrating 10 Years of Paint Up with Kamamma™
This year marks ten years of Paint Up with Kamamma™. Multiple murals now tell the stories of Melkhoutfontein, transforming the community into a vibrant open-air gallery affirming and celebrating its heritage, creativity and community pride.
The murals welcome visitors from around the world while helping preserve and share the rich cultural heritage through guided tours, educational activities and a variety of media.
💚 Thank You
Thank you to everyone who continues to support Dreamcatcher. Together, we’re building a stronger, sustainable future.
A special thank you to Mariaan Harris at Milkwood Marketing for her continued support of Dreamcatcher and her commitment to environmental stewardship, and to Clifton Donald and the Stilbaai Coastal Clean-up team for their outstanding work protecting the local environment, promoting composting and encouraging better waste management across the region. We are grateful to our multiple funders across the world in particularly our sister organisation Dreamcatcher Nederlands and WildeGanzen.
Looking Ahead
The final months of 2026 are shaping up to be our busiest yet, with five international groups already confirmed, alongside many independent travellers. We look forward to welcoming every visitor to communities where we work and continuing to demonstrate how community-led tourism, environmental action and cultural heritage can create lasting social, economic and environmental impact.
