Building KuCoNa: A New Space for Kurland

Last year, an abandoned building in Kurland Village began a fairly significant transformation. Together with Nature’s Valley Trust (NVT), and through our non-profit initiative MOVE, Mungo funded and managed the build that would turn it into KuCoNa Create & Connect, a new community centre in Kurland Village.

Kurland is close to home for us. Many of the Mungo team live there, and through our involvement with Kids of Kurland, it’s a community we’ve known and worked with for years.

When Bitou Mayor Jessica Kam Kam connected us with Nature’s Valley Trust, they already had plans for the building. Through MOVE, our non-profit initiative that receives 1% of Mungo sales, we were able to help make those plans real.

Our involvement went beyond funding. Our Managing Director, Dax Holding worked closely with NVT throughout the build, helping manage the process of turning an unused building into a functioning community centre.

But what KuCoNa would become was shaped by the community itself. More than 100 Kurland residents took part in a skills survey about what they actually wanted from the centre. There was a village competition to name it. Community members came in to paint the murals that now cover the walls. Probably a much better way to build a community centre than sitting somewhere else and deciding what a community needs.

KuCoNa is now organised around three areas: a Learning Hub, a Community Care Hub and a Nature Connect Hub.

There’s digital and skills training, support for entrepreneurs, youth development and environmental programmes. There’s community and psychosocial support, activities for elders, and room for different generations to spend time together and learn from one another.

It’s a lot of things under one roof. Which is rather the point.

Our involvement with KuCoNa didn’t end when the builders left.

For the past few years, Mungo Swim Club has been our slightly mad annual invitation to get into the sea together. People turn up, swim, get cold, get out again. And somewhere along the way it has also become a way of raising money through MOVE.

This year, that money is going to Cultural Connections’ EcoYouth Circle at KuCoNa.

The EcoYouth Circle runs weekly sessions for young people, along with outings into the forests, valleys and wild spaces around The Crags. The kind of places that are very close by, but that doesn’t necessarily mean everyone gets the chance to spend time in them.

There’s something we like about Swim Club funds ending up here. A bunch of people getting into the sea together, helping another bunch of people get out into the world around them.

This year we also brought our annual Kids of Kurland workshop to KuCoNa. After a morning at the Mungo Mill learning about weaving and textile production, the kids piled into the Mungo bus and headed to the centre, where our designers Ray and Lauriane ran a colour theory workshop and everyone designed their own kikoi.

One design will be chosen to weave at the mill, with proceeds going towards an additional teacher at The Crags Primary School.

The building isn’t empty anymore.

There are computers. Workshops. Murals on the walls. Young people coming in. Elders meeting. People learning things, making things, asking for help, sharing what they know.

We helped build the walls. Now we’re looking forward to seeing what grows inside them.

Do you want to contribute?

Good news, it’s easy to help. By purchasing any Mungo product you’re already contributing. 1% of our total sales goes towards MOVE which in turn supports projects like this one.

Or by purchasing the Kids of Kurland Kikoi – 100% of that sale will go directly towards hiring teachers at Kurland Primary.