Awards 2008 : Category Finalists
Arts, Culture and Communications • Business Entrepreneurs • Education • Health • Science & Technology • Social Welfare • Sport
Social Welfare
Ms Angie Phaliso manages the Rand Water Foundation which she established from scratch with the purpose to help with the education to preserve South Africa’s precious water resources and doing it in such a way that it helps alleviate poverty, creates employment and improves the lives of people living in communities close to environmentally sensitive areas.
The interventions she has steered includes projects to repair domestic leaks and infra-structure for better sanitation and hygiene, urban greening to beautify townships and under-resourced areas, and food security initiates based on community farming. She has placed considerable emphasis on capacity building, empowerment and awareness through community education.
An example of the success of the projects of her Foundation is various wetland rehabilitation projects which her organization has established to rehabilitate ecosystems that are essential for South Africa’s sustainable supply of fresh water. In the implementation of these the Rand Water Foundation and its many partners used local skills, creating much-needed employment for impoverished communities and also involving local community members in the process.
In another project and after consultation she also managed to get a buy in from the management and workers to introduce a staff involvement programme. All of them down tools for periods of times to go and build for needy communities.
It is her belief that orphans and vulnerable children does not need institutions but they need proper homes and mothers and the homes she and her colleagues are building are for these children. Five of them have been handed over to families in May 2008 while ten more will be built in 2008 and 2009.
Since the Foundation was established in 2003 it has created temporary jobs of minimum 3 years for 500 people through the water related and environmental projects she initiated and 56 permanent jobs were also created from a community farming project. She also created permanent jobs through the community farming projects. She believes in working in partnership and achieving more in a very short space of time.
The community work that Ms Phaliso does started way back in the late1980’s when communities boycotted services and bond payments. She was working as a bookkeeper at the time and negotiated time-off with her line manager to help address the problem.
Ms Phaliso utilised the Soweto Civic Association platform to reach out to the communities to educate them to understand that they have signed legal bond agreements with the banks and that these financial institutions had the right to evict them if they do not pay their monthly installments as agreed.
At the same time she negotiated with the banks to re-instate all the defaulters and to make new arrangements with the defaulters to pay their bond installments. It was a drawn out process but worked in the long run. It was during this time that one of the banks recruited her into the CSI division which was a good platform for her to touch the lives of the less fortunate. After eight years with the bank she moved to head the Rand Water Foundation.
Over all these years Ms Phaliso has touched the lives of many people in many ways She has contributed largely to alleviate and eradicate poverty through different projects where contractors were trained, plumbers were trained and the communities were educated on poverty and environmental issues as well as water conservation.
- A short profile on Ms Phaliso will be broadcast on SABC 2 after the Afrikaans and Sotho News on 22 July 2008
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Ms Malilensha Cecilia Zungu could not forsake her roots and after many years in a career in education she returned to Middleplaas at the Shongwe Mission near Malelane at Nkomazi Muncipality in Mpumalanga to launch a series of self-help projects which have had a profound effect in this community, especially the youth.
The people of the mission speak of her as their guardian angle who returned home to give so much and yet expect nothing at all in return. When she arrived back she immediately consulted with the all people of Middleplaas before she kicked of with a number of inspiring upliftment projects.
One of the first ideas was to start a computer centre in the village to help the young people to be trained to use a tool that is so essential in modern business and to bridge the digital divide. The community was one hundred percent behind her and when she spoke to the local Induna he made the first donation and important donation of five hectors of land.
The project started with the vision of building a computer centre but it soon grew to include agricultural activities on the land, HIV/ AIDS counseling as well as arts, craft and cultural activities.
The insurance giant Old Mutual donated a computer while funds were soon forthcoming from the National Development Agency which mainly funds the project. The other contributions were a water license from the Department of Water Affairs for irrigation of the sugarcane, an export and import certificate and training and skills development input from the Department of Labour.
The department trained 12 people to develop their business skills, management and crop farming, 28 people were trained in arts and crafts which included bead work, embroidery and fabric painting and 33 people in irrigation and fertilization. After the successful training period there was a graduation ceremony and exhibition of the products.
Ms Zungu also managed to arrange for education training and a Development Practices Sector education Training Authority Leadership programme to be implemented. A total of 26 learners were trained on Community Development Practice Level 4 and have completed the programme and graduated. These graduates have now acquired the skill to fund raise for the community of Middleplaas.
Another project she embarked on was to involve neighbouring communities. With the partnership of Ligwalagwala FM who recruited ten women from the outskirts of the Ehlanzeni Municipality to be trained in information and technology. Ms Zungu did the training free of charge through her own company Worktogether Development cc during August last year to celebrate woman. After the training she offered one of these women a position in her company.
As the focus of these initiatives was from the beginning planned to be on the youth it was just appropriate that a project was launched for the young people. That was the start of the Youth 2000 Club for school children both at primary school and high school, also those who are out of school.
The motto of the club was set to encourage all to succeed through difficulties and that hard work leads to great success. Their vision is to see the young people of Middleplaas become self-sufficient and sustainable in enhancing their socio-economic welfare. It is also their desire to improve their quality of life and to become computer smart and participate meaningfully in the economy to alleviate poverty.
Youth Club 2000 support young people before, during and after training to ensure that they are self sufficient and remain in employment and to be able to start their own small businesses. Other social issues such as HIV/ AIDS, sexual education, peer pressure, drugs and alcohol are also high on the agenda for discussion and support. The membership of the club currently stands on 150 and it is open to anyone who wants to join the club to acquire skills from others.
Ms Zungu has returned to her people and together they have built upliftment programmes which have had real benefits to all the people. She has become a role model who young people look up to as she has showed them that there is more to life than poverty and failure.
They have learned that one can get by with what one has and don't need to resort to illegal actions. Ms Zungu is their community hero.
- A short profile on Ms Zungu will be broadcast on SABC 2 after the Afrikaans and Sotho News on 23 July 2008.
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Dr Veni Naidu gave up a high powered and lucrative career in the corporate world ten years ago to make a real and meaningful contribution in the world of development in the hope of becoming part of a solution for a better South Africa.
She enriched her education with the focus on development and received a doctorate in researching the potential impact of HIV and AIDS on business, families and on the communities in which they live. As most studies focused on the medical aspects of HIV and AIDS at that stage she believed it to be essential to investigate the economic and social impacts.
She initially undertook a study of the impact of HIV and AIDS on strategic market plans. Dr Naidu completed the first study in South Africa on the impact on HIV and of AIDS on income-earning urban households and added new knowledge to the subject.
Other researchers have expanded on her work and some of her micro economic studies have been used in macro economic modeling. As Dr Naidu has not been shy to tread uncharted waters to make a difference to the lives of disadvantaged South Africans she has made significant contributions in the field of health and social development.
Her work has pointed at what the costs of morbidity and mortality of HIV and AIDS to households are and that extending peoples lives with treatment is more beneficial to business and to the individuals’ family.
The results have been disseminated to policymakers and decision-makers to make them aware of the potential economic and social impacts in order to influence them and improve service delivery. She found a real need for community-based organisations, Government, business and the community at large to be more effective in their development work by harmonising their efforts.
Her work then went on to facilitate the process. The results of the household survey was disseminated to a public meeting hosted by the local Soweto ward council to encourage community members to develop action plans to deal with some of the issues identified in the study.
In an unusual and innovative research action the study employed local people from Soweto without previous work experience in the field and other people from previously disadvantaged backgrounds.
After the study Dr Naidu assisted each member of the research team to find employment in the research sector. In recognition of the impact that the study would have on fieldworkers, she obtained sponsorship for this service from the Department of Psychology, Vista University based in Soweto so that each fieldworker would receive psychotherapy during the course of the fieldwork.
Whilst it is true that many interviewees usually participate in research grudgingly the respondents in the Soweto study felt they were being heard. Dr Naidu assisted some of these families to apply for social grants, obtain their identity documents, be transported to hospitals to access health care in emergencies, contact school principals to release school reports of children who did not pay school fees and was an empathetic ear.
In another large piece of research she has also looked at Government’s support of non-profit NPO’s which is based and justified on the fact that there is an impossible burden placed on the public health system by HIV and AIDS and that it is encouraged by the additional benefit of creating employment under the Expanded Public Works Programme.
Dr Naidu was however concerned that little is known about the cost of services or the performance of these NPOs providing the service. She then undertook research on home community-based care in five provinces of South Africa on the cost of home community-based care to service adults and orphans and vulnerable children contributing to policy debates and program action.
This study encouraged the provision of budgets to provide an appropriate level of service in a sustainable manner, the development of norms and standards for home-community based care, development of monitoring and evaluation indicators, capacity building and training of NPOs.
It was the first time a researcher brought the community, the donors and the government together in a forum where the NPOs were empowered to disseminate the research findings. While doing this study she also assisted some NPOs to write out their business plans to access funding and complete financial reports; these activities were outside her role as a researcher.
Dr Naidu has also assisted the National Department of Social Development to establish research gaps in HIV and AIDS and assisted Metropolitan Life with the “Live the Future” HIV and AIDS Scenarios for South Africa: 2005-2025.
The World Bank engaged her services in 2007 to assist with tracking aid financing to the Somalian health sector that covered a six year period. It is the kind of research project which failed in many conflict countries but Dr Naidu managed to conclude this project successfully. The result will hopefully be that more funding will reach the Somalian health sector.
- A short profile on Dr Naidu will be broadcast on SABC 2 after the Afrikaans and Sotho News on 29 July 2008.
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