Connecting Dots

Amandla Development is working with filmmaker Wim Steytler to produce a short film, Connecting Dots, to illustrate the necessity of a collective impact approach to improving education and empowering communities. This film is going to give young people from different communities in the Cape Town area of South Africa the chance to tell their stories. We’ll see how a holistic approach to improving education is so necessary, how these young people, though from very different environments, all need support on many levels. Just one voice describing that complexity isn’t enough.

This film will be a tool for Amandla Development’s efforts to bring people together to solve complex social issues. The work demands collective effort from actors across sectors in a given community. By showing the breadth of challenges and the necessity of many inputs, Amandla will use the film to spark action. We’d love to hear your thoughts on the challenges young people face daily in your community and how the people in the community can support them. Poverty has a massive impact on one’s ability to learn. Until we start tackling that, we’ll keep finding our efforts blocked.

Follow the production of the film on Facebook (www.facebook.com/AmandlaDevelopment) and Twitter (@amandladev) and even support its production with a contribution via Kickstarter (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1852597391/connecting-dots). Then be on the lookout for a screening in a city near you!

Extraordinary Schools

Amandla was honoured to be invited to a recent meeting of the newly formed South African Extraordinary Schools Coalition. This group of mostly independent schools and partner organisations formed to bring the weight of a collective to answering questions around how to make schools centres of excellence.

As the group discussed goals and strategies, a few central questions emerged:

How can South African schools integrate lessons already learnt by school reform movements outside SA?

How can their schools model instructional leadership?

How might they form a third tier of schooling akin to American charter schools?

How can we measure what’s effective in the classroom?

And how can they construct a coalition that’s non-bureaucratic and deals very directly with real issues?

Some potential answers include teacher peer review and sharing of best practice to increase their knowledge and skills. Integrating ICT for the most modern classrooms and to develop students in ways that teachers sometimes can’t is on the list. Also, creating mechanisms for real-time knowledge sharing can help improve teacher effectiveness. But there’s also a larger question around determining how what works actually works so that it can be replicated.

As Amandla works to connect successful efforts, it eagerly participates in discussion to help answer these questions.

Organisational Leadership- Work it in

How personal is your work? How much do you internalise what you do? I’m sure most of us would say it’s personal insofar as it takes up most of our time. But how often are we able to consider critically how our work affects others?

As part of Amandla’s model for leadership development, personalisation is key to leading a social change organisation. In partnership with Positive Vibes in Namibia, Amandla developed a training for LGBT leaders called “LGBT and Me” and piloted it recently for a group of leaders in Eastern Cape. The idea is for leaders to engage in an “inside-out” approach to leading. Although one may live in the same community one works in and even have had similar experiences, learning how to process those experiences in a way that changes how you lead your organisation, plan programmes, and demonstrate understanding to the people you serve is critical to leading an effective organisation. The training is designed to facilitate that initial working in and working out. But it is just the first step. Indeed, leadership development takes place over time and in one’s own work context. So communication between participants in this first training will continue to interact around the topic and will also interact with other leaders to discuss their challenges and successes.

Because improving and sustaining good work is a key part of Amandla’s model for capacitating collaborative work, this was an important step in testing that model. Because we want an education system that’s inclusive of all South Africans, this is an important sector to work in.  Certainly more to come.

Limpopo Farmworkers

Amandla’s next stop was Polokwane in Limpopo Province for a consult with advice offices working with farmworkers. Limpopo has traditionally been one of the most challenging places for farmworkers, and lately for farmers. Indeed, many farmers there live in fear of escalating crime and a seemingly ambivalent police force.

For workers living on farms, challenges include insufficient housing, lack of access to schools for their children, unsafe working conditions, physical abuse and unfair wages. For migrant workers the working conditions are often worse and unreported for fear of deportation. With xenophobic violence an issue, advice offices are also trying to make clear that these migrant workers should be seen as vulnerable refugees rather than as a threat. Needless to say, the advice offices have their hands full.

But, there are some relevant larger questions too. For example, what percentage of the workers on these farms are migrants compared to 10 or 20 years ago? Have working conditions deteriorated because of migrant exploitation or just general exploitation? Are farms simply becoming unprofitable in a changing economy such that cheap labour is almost a necessity? Or is greed to blame?

There is a lot of rights education to be done here in addition to the looming issue of unequal access to schooling. Lack of access to schooling creates a generational poverty issue where opportunities for the children of farmworkers are actually decreasing over time. Indeed, this is a prime example of the challenge of rural education where resources are limited and vast distances between people and schools make schooling difficult. One also witnesses the extent to which cross-sectoral problems have an impact on a single issue. In this case, education, healthcare, legal rights issues are all intertwined. Moreover, it underscores the importance of understanding context and of having good baseline data for determining your starting point for capacity development.

In researching these questions, Amandla can help these groups ascertain precisely what needs are unmet in their communities and exactly how to meet them. Fully understanding context and needs beyond the anecdotal is absolutely pivotal to effective planning.

Windhoek

The next stop on Amandla’s journey was Windhoek, Namibia. Namibia is the second most sparsely populated country on the planet and boasts untouched beauty like no other. But why is Windhoek a part of this journey you ask? Well, Namibia, formerly known as Southwest Africa, was part of South Africa until its independence in 1990. It therefore has a shared history of struggle both against apartheid and for its own self-determination as a nation. And having witnessed the successes of some of its NGOs and policies of empowerment, it’s clear they have something to teach us about strengthening each other’s efforts.

The week began with learning from Yelula/u-khâi. Yelula shared its successes in personalising the struggles of the communities where it works. It was inspiring to hear how over time, the group has truly become of its communities. As such, it was sinking into a new way of local operation and growing out of the mould of internationally run aid organisation.

There was also hard thinking on how to incorporate the concept of civic-driven change into the work of the ogranisations present, representing South Africa, Zimbabwe, Namibia, and Mozambique. With a local history of bottom-up change movements, what better setting than here for forming a robust system of participatory governance that promotes accountability amongst policy makers in opportunity creation?

Amandla is a firm believer that solutions for real empowerment can’t be parachuted in or pushed through log frames, but rather though partnership with groups and individuals who understand the lived reality. Helping a given partner establish a culture that taps into the expertise and experience of its community is just another block on which to build.

World Cup! Ke nako!

As South Africa celebrates having the World Cup, Amandla just invites everyone to reflect on the significance of Africa’s first hosting of the tournament and how far SA has come.

Though many feared a long and bloody civil war following apartheid’s end, South Africa has defied its critics. Though many Afro-pessimists said they wouldn’t be ready and that it would be an embarrassment, the fans have been having a great time. The spotlight is keenly focused on South Africa and its many accomplishments and challenges.

It’s not an overstatement to say that this sport tournament is emblematic of much more than soccer. (After all, football did help end a civil war in Côte d’Ivoire). It is something to celebrate and be inspired by that the arc of South Africa’s history is bending slowly but surely towards greater freedom and a just society for all. Of course, there’s an awful lot more to be done, but let’s all take this month to celebrate the great work already done and the solid foundation laid and to thoughtfully discuss the way forward. Ke nako (it’s time)! Feel it. It is here.

AIDS and Me, AIDS and You

The location was Johannesburg, and the question was “What does HIV/AIDS have to do with me?” Amandla Development recently went through Positive Vibes’ “AIDS and Me” workshop, a powerful experience of personalising HIV. Positive Vibes teaches this mindset to NGO staff who work with HIV+ individuals. When the struggles of the people you work with are so far removed from your reality, how do you effectively help them?

Positive Vibes leads intense visualisation exercises and sessions designed to place participants in the shoes of those they help. “When did you first hear of HIV and when did you actually first do something to protect yourself or those you love from the virus? Why the time gap?” “How would the conversation go as you tell your partner you’re HIV+?” These are the questions individuals walking into a support group have already grappled with. But have we? If not, why not?

As Amandla develops its capacity building methodologies, it incorporates the belief that institutions cannot effectively serve their constituents without being of the communities in which they work. For starters, that means personalising the work. It also means working with partners to promote symbiotic relationships with communities where both sides educate each other. Amandla employs this knowledge as it works to make policies intended to improve people’s opportunities more effective in meeting those needs.

Lekgotla

Amandla’s most recent stop was Pretoria. 8 to 12 April marked the fourth annual LGBTI (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersexed) Youth Lekgotla of Kaleidoscope, a gathering of youth organisations, and Amandla Development was invited to participate. Lekgotla means “public meeting” and is part of a tradition in which all have a say. This lekgotla took place in Pretoria and marked several turning points of note. Although South Africa is just the fifth country in the world to legalise same-sex unions, LGBTI individuals face a number of struggles to laying hold of their rights as equal citizens.

According to research done by the Joint Working Group, 13% of South African LGBTI youth have been sexually assaulted or raped and over 30% have experienced physical abuse. All too common is the practice of “curative rape” where men will rape a lesbian under the belief that she will be cured of her “affliction”. As one young person put it, “We’re getting to the point where public racism is unacceptable. But no one cares about you if you’re gay”.

South Africa’s opportunity going forward is singular—to be a beacon of human rights to the world by making sure none of its people is left behind in grasping hard fought freedoms. So the tremendous progress made at Lekgotla is all the more important as the younger generation of South Africans takes up the mantle of the struggle for equal rights for all. A charter was adopted, outlining a vision for an inclusive South Africa where LGBTI individuals do not have to live in fear, where the authorities do not turn a blind eye to crimes committed against them, and where they are not silenced by a hostile majority. More structure was also given to Kaleidoscope to act as an umbrella organisation to support youth across the country.

Going forward, Amandla will work with Kaleidoscope to build its capacity to meet the needs of its constituents. The youth they represent not only need a voice, they need advocates. Amandla is busy helping identify the gaps in Kaleidoscope’s work and member organisations’ ability to be a source of hope. Together we can reach more. Watch this space.

Amandla!

Welcome to the Amandla Development blog! This space will allow you to learn more about Amandla Development’s philosophies and activities.

Just what is Amandla Development? The name Amandla comes from the Xhosa/Zulu tradition of call-and-response. A crowd member declares “Amandla!” meaning “power” and the crowd responds “Ngawethu!” adding that the power “is ours.”

The development part points to an empowered development paradigm. In this paradigm Amandla Development exists to strengthen the capacity of organisations making South Africa a more equitable society, particularly but not exclusively those organisations improving education quality. By equipping and empowering social entrepreneurs to manage their innovations, Amandla helps shift the development paradigm from one of aid and charity to one characterised by locally-driven efforts. That is, the ideas already exist, but sufficient structures to manage them are lacking, and Amandla is coming alongside as a partner in moving from idea to action.

Amandla believes that education is a key means of building an inclusive and equitable South Africa. Amandla’s vision is a South Africa in which no one is left behind. An education in the school hall helps pull one out of poverty. Education outside the school hall is equally important: Educating individuals on what it means to live in a democracy and claiming their rights empowers them to engage their leaders about their needs and to take ownership of their future.

Amandla also believes that as South African democracy matures, the voice and input of civil society and communities must increase correspondingly. While the South African government spends more on education as a portion of its budget than any other country, results have lagged. But communities, youth, and social entrepreneurs are stepping up and making strides. Amandla is working with them to connect the dots between their small-scale innovations and systems level change. Helping these groups grow and prove which of their successes are not limited by context will provide for a connection to policy level support and the sustainability that brings.

Amandla Development officially launched full-time operation in South Africa in March 2010. As a member of MAGI (Multi-Agency Grants Initiative), Amandla is building capacity in Community Based Organisations (CBOs) who educate their populations on how to access their rights as individuals both in and out of schools. This space will be used to update you on Amandla’s work around South Africa. So join us on this journey and don’t be shy to contribute, ask questions, and above all challenge. After all, it’s part of answering the call “Ngawethu!”