Purpose of Old School Birding Club

Old School Birding Club is a tourism development initiative, put in place by PROJECT WORK, within the  Umkhanyakude district Municipality  ( Elephant Coast ) in North East Kwa Zulu Natal, South Africa

This project came about as a job creation tactic for project work, where the many different local communities will be introduced to tourism opportunities, focusing  on eco-tourism, agri-tourism,  birding related tourism, cultural related tourism  and the hospitality industry that comes along with all tourism related matters.

Old School Birding Club will act as the catalyst to get the many different local communities to work together as one big team, where visitors to the area will experience the vastly varied landscapes, ecosystems and cultural identities that make up the iSimangaliso Wetland Park World Heritage site along the eastern Seaboard of KZN South Africa

The current situation where the local population is excluded from the tourism mix, due to them not having a tourism product suitable for the international tourism market will be addressed through the gradual development of birding friendly tourism products such as bird hides, walking trails and nature based tourism as well as cultural and historical tourism initiatives.  The Old School Birding Club is in place to set up and manage a tourism initiative called old school birding Route, which will be a collection of all the above mentioned activities along with accommodation and other hospitality ventures like restaurants, bars and live music venues.

These activities and related infrastructures will be managed through a co-operative style management structure that will run a collective bookings office  and information distribution network, which will enable local rural folks to assimilate into the current tourism structures in an organized and well managed manner.  The tourism potential of Umkhanyakude District Municipality is huge, as there are no factories or industrial development nodes within the area,  leaving nature based tourism as a very easy option to pursue.

Problem is how ever that the formal tourism industry currently sees these folks as an irritation, and potential competitors.  Old School Birding Club is working on this and we hope to instill the idea that the more tourism products available, the more tourists we will be able to please.  More happy tourists will mean more folks coming to the area, thus increasing the size of the market considerably.  The first step is to get the domestic tourism market functional and making money, then the international sector will soon follow, as international tourists want to do what the domestic tourists do.

International tourists  do not appreciate being misinformed and showed one side of the story, which is not actually the truth, but a disguised version of the truth which the elite want to show the world, only to come home and see a vastly different picture on TV where hunger and deprivation are the main show.  Doing things this way and allowing the local rural folks on the ground to benefit directly from tourism has many beneficial outcomes, with crime reduction, poverty alleviation,  job creation, cost effective improved nature conservation tactics, improved roads, better education systems, higher community standards and so much more.

The purpose of old School birding club is thus to put this community development strategy in place and get the folks within the rural areas of Umkhanyakude District Municipality working within the formal tourism industry, through Old School Birding Route, as is envisioned in the Tourism development white papers of KZN and Central Governement.  

by Frankie2ocks