Woodworkers rebuild livelihood

DRIVEN to start something that will generate income after battling unemployment, creating jobs for others and stretching out depleted pensions, a group of Port Elizabeth entrepreneurs are carving a name for themselves through a cooperative.

The group of woodwork specialists – ranging in age from 31 to 74 – started the Masenge Manufacturing Coop in 2009 and have been surviving on restoring and building church furniture and making coffins.

Now they have ventured into “upcycling” school desks.

Helped by community donor the Ikhala Trust, Masenge has just wrapped up a project in which members restored 20 tattered desks from a school in Alexandria for R300 a desk.

This, they say, is a step towards helping schools get as good as new furniture for a fraction of what they would have otherwise paid or while they waited for delivery from the Department of Education.

Project leader Lungelo Mashwabane, 56, of New Brighton, said they had been working on the desks for the past two months.

“We got the desk frames, which were old and rusty, and whatever was left of the desk-tops and refurbished these to look like new,” he said.