The legacy of Douglas and Eleanor Murray
Invest in South Africa’s potential
Cover photograph: Papwa Sewgolum Golf Course in Durban, South Africa 2018 ©Johnny Miller / Unequal Scenes
The DG Murray Trust (DGMT) is a public innovator through strategic investment. Innovation is achieved through behavioural change (influencing individual and societal mindsets and actions) and through technological change. For us, public innovation is simply the process of making the world a better place for all people, in synergy with nature.
We are committed to developing South Africa’s potential by helping to create an ethical and enabling environment where human needs and aspirations are met; and where every person is given the opportunity to fulfil their potential, for both personal benefit and for that of the wider community.
We see our role as to:
ɸ commission projects that can seize the opportunities for success;
ɸ communicate those opportunities in ways that inspire leadership and action; and
ɸ connect people of like and unlike mind, who are committed to the same goal.
Primrose and Makause in Johannesburg, South Africa 2018 ©Johnny Miller / Unequal Scenes
Our focus
Our approach to communication
Our approach to funding
WHAT INFORMS AND DRIVES THE DGMT TEAM?
What is the inequality trap?
Twisting our way out of the trap
The conditions for a thriving society
Ten opportunities to escape the inequality trap
WHAT WE WOULD LIKE TO INVEST IN
Connect and cultivate imaginative leaders
Release systemic chokes that trap us in inequality
Build productive synergies between communities and the environment
Give every child the benefit of early childhood development
Stop nutritional stunting of young children
Make sure every child is ready to read and do maths by the time they go to school
Build simple, loving connections for every child
Accelerate learning for learners failed by the system
Create new connections to opportunity for young people
Support young people to keep their grip on opportunity
Place-based synergies
Cultivate community engagement and ownership
Enable integrated human development programme implementation
Create opportunities for economic participation
Foster safe and enabling environments
Scale the impact of effective programmes
The value that DGMT adds to the broader national development effort falls largely outside of formal institutions, in the spaces where government provision is often poor, where the private sector sees little role for itself in offering health, education and social services, and in parts of our nation that tend to be neglected.
DGMT’s work is centred on:
We see this as our main focus because:
› Investment in children and young people has the greatest prospect of changing long-term educational and economic trajectories.
› Expanding the semi-skilled labour market (semi-skilled in terms of the knowledge economy) will widen pathways into the skilled workforce while reducing wage inequality.
› Infusion of knowledge and skills into informal socio-economic networks (e.g. childminder networks) is likely to give the highest returns in the next decade.
› Supportive interfaces with government and the private sector (e.g. markets, financing and accreditation) will ensure greater integration into the mainstream economy over time.
Much of the real power for change and innovation today rests in synergy of human behaviour, technology and our environment. Commercial innovation is powering ahead while government and civil society struggle to ensure that the gains from innovation benefit all. Our role should be that of a real-time synergiser of technology and human behaviour for public innovation – bringing together innovations in policy, programmes and technology and integrating it into local communities.
I NS p IRING CHANGE is at the heart of our communications objectives. We have identified ten powerful opportunities to escape the inequality trap, requiring buy-in, new coalitions and a shift in mindsets.
But the next five years demand that we go further by provoking change. We want to influence complex social and economic dynamics through 3D thinking – combining programmatic, political and public-oriented strategies to open up windows of change.1
Our synergistic power lies in the effective framing of information and evidencebased research. We will expand this role over the next five years as we drive engagement with the wealth of ideas and content emanating from our ecosystem.
To this end, we will design and implement a resource hub – a “well of ideas” intended to:
› help frame the issues related to DGMT’s key opportunities;
› enable policymakers, journalists, researchers and other interest groups to source well-formulated policy briefs; and
› share knowledge through a variety of forums (virtual and literal “town hall” meetings, editorials and other formats).
Over the past ten years, DGMT has developed an unusual and distinct identity as a public innovator through strategic investment, which we hope is an exemplar for foundations in the South.
Our experience is that funders can “punch above their weight” in a developing country such as South Africa – which can have massively negative consequences or which can present a real opportunity to achieve a greater impact over a shorter period of time than in countries where political systems are more established. We also think that typical grant-making tends to fill gaps temporarily, but rarely leads to demonstrable change, and that there is a clear need for local activist foundations to build evidence, public demand and “political” alliances at the same time. We can do things that foreign foundations can’t – such as siding with government in court or even litigating against government when it fails to fulfil its constitutional obligations.
The rootedness of a local foundation in a country of the South enables sustained, context-sensitive co-investing by foundations based in other countries – and, we would argue, greatly enhances the expected benefit of such co-investment. For this reason, DGMT actively seeks co-investment in trying to achieve its strategic objectives.
Over the next five years, we are likely to see both a significant realignment of party politics, but more significantly, a realignment of the state. The space for public-private partnerships (both financial and programmatic) in pursuit of national goals is likely to expand, as narrow models of political patronage hopefully give way to a professional civil service and openness to effective collaboration.
A foundation like DGMT – a long-term public innovator and investor – could contribute significantly to the rehabilitation of this nation if it retains its identity as a dynamic, learning and caring organisation. This is our commitment as we embark on our next five-year strategy, together with other investors, implementing partners, government, the private sector, trade unions and other civil society partners.
In some countries, the gaps between rich and poor are so wide that too few people are able to build the knowledge and skills needed to fully participate in the society and the economy. Because skills are scarce, those who have them reap disproportionately high financial rewards and social status, while those who don’t are excluded from these benefits.
Those excluded have worse nutrition and poorer health and education, limiting their potential to nurture their children and contribute to the economy as they grow up. The gaps are so big that even “social wages” in some form or another are not enough to break the cycles of exclusion. This lost potential means that these countries can’t keep up with their people’s needs or benefit fully from global innovation. South Africa is one of these countries.
A quarter of our children are nutritionally stunted, seriously damaging their About one in ten children (1.2 million) fail their grade each year and 300 000 learners drop out of school annually, meaning that fewer than half our children actually complete Grade 12. school leavers will become a skilled worker, able to participate in the knowledge economy, resulting in a steadily widening wage gap between the lowest and highest 20% of households. In the lowest 20% of households, the trap extends its reach from one generation to the next.
The inequality trap constricts development all along the way.
DGMT is a long-term investor. We accept that many of the outcomes we seek to achieve may take another 10–20 years or require intergenerational change. However, whether those outcomes are achieved depends on what we as a nation do today and in the next few years. For this reason, we plan our strategy in five-year horizons, even as our compass is set by longer-term goals.
It is clear that, three decades post-apartheid, the structures of our society are not sufficiently changed to put our nation on a fundamentally different trajectory. Fewer children are dying in childhood, but their life prospects are not much better than those of their parents.
We know that trajectories of change take time, but we will only end up in a better place if we radically change the factors that determine the incline of the curve. And “radically” means “at its roots”. For human development, this means changing the day-to-day influences on the lives of every child from conception up.
We aim to change the prospects of children and young people, putting them on a fundamentally different trajectory to that of their parents and grandparents. At first, the difference may seem small and insignificant, but over time, as these paths continue to diverge, the effect of our investments should become clearer and more pronounced.
Twisting the nation’s trajectory 4
Trying to change life trajectories is ambitious and profound. It requires us to radically influence the lives of individuals and to be part of changing the circumstances in which they live. We are a small player and can only have far-reaching influence if our actions help twist the nation’s trajectory upwards.
South Africa is at a particularly low point in its post-apartheid journey. It was colonialism and apartheid that created the inequality trap from which we have been unable to escape, but this legacy has been made worse by bad decisions and corruption over the past twenty years. PostMandela, the failure to place children at the centre of development, AIDS-denialism and state capture have undermined our nation’s stability and future prospects.
But our position is that it is the action of bringing about positive change that constitutes hope, not whether the circumstances in which we find ourselves seem favourable enough to be hopeful. As public innovators, our power to shape the future lies in our ability to release systemic bottlenecks, prompt tipping points in public thinking 5 and capacitate and catalyse networks that become more energetic the larger they get 6 – through deliberate twists away from the status quo.
To build a thriving society, more people must have the knowledge, skills and opportunity to participate fully in society and the economy, for the good of one another, and in synergy with the environment.
Knowledge capital is widely and evenly distributed
People are able to use it well
For the good of one another and in synergy with their environments
Knowledge capital is the potential of an individual, community, organisation or nation to use knowledge effectively for personal or collective benefit to society. At a population level, it gives rise to healthier, wealthier and more productive societies.7 The deployment of this capital enables people to participate in an increasingly knowledge-based economy, moving beyond unskilled work into the semi-skilled and skilled domains of labour. However, these inputs not only build knowledge economies , but contribute to the development of knowledge democracies . 8 There is now a remarkable confluence of evidence that economic security is vital for happiness, health and social stability,9 and that the key to upward mobility is the full package of education, from preschool to college.10 Home (love, nutrition and cognitive stimulation) 11 and community (culture and connectedness) 12 shape the ability of people to use that knowledge capital, while social conflict and environmental degradation reduce societal resilience and undermine sustainable development.13
We have identified 10 opportunities to build a thriving society. They constitute some of the most profound twists to enable South Africa to escape the inequality trap.
These opportunities are embedded within three goals:
Innovation and inclusion often pull in different directions when a society is unequal. In South Africa, the legacy of colonialism and apartheid continues to define the ability of the majority to participate meaningfully in our economy and society. This means that marginalised groups are often excluded from accessing the knowledge and skills that enable behavioural change, and cannot afford to leverage or participate in technological innovation that can improve their livelihoods or quality of life. The work of this portfolio aims to build the scaffolding for human and knowledge capital to thrive and create lines of flight out of the inequality trap by driving public innovation.
We know that ensuring access to early learning presents a real opportunity to address intergenerational poverty, advance equality and development, and benefit a largely informal sector that is dominated by black women. Part of this work entails building a strong public mandate; improving coordination and leadership to strengthen institutions; capacitating fit-for-purpose public systems that facilitate delivery of quality early learning programmes; designing effective delivery platforms that support the scaling of early learning within informal socio-economic networks; and unlocking public finances for early learning.
Young people need income to survive and participate in society. If they can’t reach critical pathways, they will remain stuck outside of the mainstream. The term “productivity” should be viewed as economic participation, together with the creativity, social relationships, health, gender identity and other factors that signify well-being. These factors are critical, but can rarely be achieved without sufficient economic participation to break intergenerational cycles of poverty.
This opportunity embodies three lines of flight out of the inequality trap, namely imagination, connection and capacitation of leadership. DGMT has long held the view that civil society should take its equal place alongside government and business in shaping the social and economic future of South Africa. This requires a pipeline of skilled, confident leaders with a strong sense of identity as public innovators. Leadership for public innovation is not limited to organisational leadership, but includes community leaders and mobilisers who drive collective action for change in their communities. We believe that community ownership and participation are fundamental tenets in building a sense of pride and aspiration.
five-year aims:
› Achieve effective leadership coalitions to seize the ten opportunities towards DGMT’s goals.
› Galvanise civil society to have greater influence and participation in national development strategies.
Build and grow an influential national network of social innovators who will contribute to the successful transformation of society.
› Facilitate the generation of ideas and ways to connect and collaborate by hosting digital platforms that are recognised sources of knowledge across government and civil society.
› Strengthen collaboration and positive engagement between the state, civil society and the private sector.
p rovide funding and packages of support to improve the effectiveness and impact of organisations. Build collective action to strengthen community pride and aspiration.14
› Develop a diagnostic tool that defines and identifies organisational strengths and gaps for civil society organisations, and model an effective approach for sector strengthening.
› Incubate and grow DGMT’s initiatives that address civil society’s most pressing issues.
› Support local initiatives that build collective action and strengthen community pride and aspiration.
› Enable communities to be active participants in their local development process.
› Support and improve local government systems to enable the implementation of DGMT’s place-based synergies.
› Support fundamental services provided by civil society organisations in communities through grants of compassion and care.
› DGMT influences public and social innovation through its various digital platforms.
› A network of over 10 000 young public innovators working towards improving their communities is established through our partner and incubated initiatives.
› A network/community of practice is formed and cultivated from our sector-strengthening initiatives and grantees.
› DGMT’s diagnostic tool is used by civil society organisations to gauge adaptive capacity and sustainability.
› Various DGMT sector-strengthening initiatives are integrated as a package of support, in addition to support provided through strengthening grants.
› DGMT funds and supports at least 30 local collective action initiatives, with the reported communities reflecting a stronger sense of pride and aspiration.
› DGMT supports at least four communities, which have improved capacity to engage with local government processes.
› Together with the place-based synergy team, DGMT co-designs an approach to improving the coordination of local government services.
› Civil society works actively with municipalities to embed civic engagement in local government processes.
› DGMT supports civil society organisations to provide services of care and compassion.
Systemic chokes are the failures of policy, whether by design or consequence, that hinder the ability of individuals and communities to access and leverage innovation for human development. These systemic chokes often take the form of social ills such as binge- and heavy drinking and gender-based violence, or of institutional systems that exclude marginalised groups from equitable access to welfare services and mobile data. Our work aims to disrupt these trajectories of exclusion. Realising our goals requires long-term commitments to the lines of flight we have opened up through reducing alcohol harms and gender-based violence, improving financing systems for social welfare services and removing the obstacle of high data costs for vulnerable groups.
five-year aims:
› Implement effective zero-rating of mobile content and services provided by public benefit organisations.
› Model a comprehensive alcohol harms reduction strategy to be adopted by government.
› Establish a fair and effective interface between government and NGOs providing welfare services.
› Demonstrate effective strategies to reduce gender-based violence.
Advocate for implementation of the “Five Best Buys” for reducing alcohol harm endorsed by the World Health Organisation (WHO).
› Undertake strategic public advocacy and policy reform for alcohol harm reduction.
› Ensure an effective comprehensive ban on alcohol advertising.
› Explore the viability of minimum unit pricing and its implementation.
› Develop effective legislative strategies for limiting liquor outlet density and restricting operating hours.
› Improve access to psychosocial support in vulnerable communities.
Remove the obstacle of high data costs for vulnerable groups. Improve the efficiency and effectiveness of welfare financing through the Sector Funding policy.
› Model and deliver a solution to implement the new spectrum license condition, in order to ensure access to free educational and socio-economic development content.
› Ensure that the Sector Funding Policy and all relevant guidelines are adopted and implemented across all provinces.
› Design an integrated model to implement the core package of mandatory social services.
› Develop and test digital solutions for the nonprofit organisation (NPO) financing process and the implementation of the Sector Funding Policy that are adopted and utilised by NPOs and provincial departments.
Support initiatives that aim to improve the lived experience of women in South Africa.
› Model and support solutions for gender-based violence.
› Support interventions that aim to disrupt gender-based systemic inequality.
› The Liquor Amendment Bill is passed and implemented.
› All provinces in South Africa have comprehensive liquor legislation.
› Binge drinking decreases incrementally by at least 1.3% per annum.
› There is increased and consistent access to psychosocial support in at least four provinces where we have psychosocial interventions.
› Zero-rated mobile services are provided by public benefit organisations and government departments across South Africa.
› State operational inefficiencies in the financing of social welfare services are addressed.
› A model of the core package of mandatory social welfare services that the state must ensure is finalised and implemented as well as how these services are to be prioritised.
› The government–NGO contracting has a simplified and efficient process.
› There is a gradual increase in funding for the sector through a reformed financing system.
› Clear strategic approaches to reducing gender-based violence are supported by a community of funding organisations.
› Civil society organisations working on reducing gender-based violence and gender inequality have access to increased funding opportunities.
As we continue to drive public innovation that disrupts trajectories of exclusion, it’s imperative that we invest in improving the synergy between human development and the environment. While we seek to advance innovation through technology and behaviour change, the innovation we pursue cannot be at the expense of nature, but in synergy with it. Climate change is arguably the most pressing issue facing humanity as urbanisation rapidly increases faster than our ability to prevent and adapt to changes in global weather patterns caused by human activity. These environmental challenges particularly impact vulnerable communities where environmental degradation and poverty reinforce each other, as people are both agents and carry the burden of environmental degradation.15 poor communities are most vulnerable to the impact of climate change than other population groups. The poorest members of our society often live on the most damaged land and in the most polluted neighbourhoods. Many people are without access to clean air, water and services. This is further exacerbated by the impact of climate change on rising food prices, crop failures and water shortages. We must support communities by tackling the systemic failures that make them vulnerable while equipping them to protect the environment. At the same time, we must enable communities to understand the opportunities and benefits of synergy with nature in terms of their livelihoods, health and sense of well-being.
five-year aims:
› Preserve and expand a language of ecology that draws on, and has relevance for, local communities.
› Establish an expanded network of local food production and markets.
› Set up waste management and recycling in specific communities.
p reserve and expand local languages of ecology in communities and enable participation in global climate change debates.
› Commission research that maps the nexus of human development and the environment.
› Through responsive grant-making, support projects and programmes that:
• show productive synergies that harness indigenous knowledge for the interconnectedness of environment and communities;
• make use of natural resources in sustainable ways;
• protect and restore natural spaces;
• reduce single-use consumption and carbon use; and
• create work and a sense of aspiration.
Support initiatives that encourage local food production and markets.
› Address the impact of climate change and environmental degradation on food insecurity by improving the ability of communities to leverage and own food systems and agricultural value chains.
› Support and connect local initiatives that strengthen community food production and markets.
› Build a coalition between the Department of Agriculture, Land Reform & Rural Development, trade unions, the private sector and civil society to support our objectives.
Reduce the impact of environmental degradation 16 and waste on vulnerable communities.
› Improve local government systems for managing waste, land and spatial inequality.
› Support and stimulate the informal waste economy.
› People are able to engage with issues of environmental degradation and climate change through the lens of how these factors impact their own communities.
› DGMT supports at least four communities with vibrant agricultural value chains that are effectively reducing food insecurity.
› DGMT establishes a network of local food production initiatives, linked to local and wider markets.
› DGMT has at least four partnerships with municipalities implementing improved environmental management strategies.
› The informal waste economy has an increased market share.
Investment in young children may be the single greatest opportunity to escape the inequality trap. We know that children are imbued with potential, but for most of South Africa’s children – more than 60%17 of whom are multi-dimensionally poor – this potential is constrained by a constellation of social, psychological, economic and political factors. They are stuck in a cycle of poverty that limits social mobility. The first five years of a child’s life lay the groundwork for their lifelong development – a crucial period where access to early learning, good nutrition, care and safety can set a child on a pathway of compounding positive effects as they enter school and beyond.
DGMT invests in programmes that seek to scale access to quality early learning and prioritises the public demand for early learning. This is done through advocacy and stakeholder engagement; unlocking opportunities for increased government financing; supporting innovations that improve access to data and support data-driven decision making; and working with our coalition partners (including funders, academics, NGO partners, training organisations, implementers and corporate allies) to formalise an ECD agency within a public–private partnership that will focus on increased coordination and leadership across the sector.
Our support for programmes aims to strengthen socio-economic networks in the informal sector (e.g. childminder and early learning sites that do not yet receive state subsidies), and strengthen their interface with government to ensure progressive formalisation, quality assurance and financing.
five-year aim:
› Ensure that 2 million children aged 0–5 have access to subsidised early learning programmes by 2027 (effectively trebling access to public financing).
Ensure that all children in quintiles 1–3 have access to quality early learning. Increase prioritisation and demand for early learning.
› Support social franchise models and other innovations that seek to increase access to subsidised, quality early learning programmes (ELPs).
› Help the state to establish a system for quality assurance and support for ELPs.
› Resource ELPs to improve quality and sustainability.
› Support systems for promoting quality and sustainability within ELPs.
› Support caregivers to provide early learning and care for young children.
› Increase public engagement that stimulates caregiver demand for early learning.
› Directly engage key government actors through various mechanisms including secondments in key departments such as National Treasury or the Department of Basic Education (DBE).
› Seek representation on key committees such as the Interdepartmental ECD Steering Committee and the Inter-sectoral Forum for ECD.
› Focus on highlighting the role of municipalities in promoting access to ECD.
› Support advocacy efforts through the Real Reform for ECD to accelerate public demand for, and awareness of, key advocacy issues within the sector.
Drive sector-wide coordination and leadership. Support systems innovation that enables the roll-out of quality EL p s. Unlock public financing for ECD.
› Support and convene key government stakeholders, funders and civil society organisations to map out key milestones for setting up an ECD agency.
› Provide thought leadership that shapes public engagement and galvanises interest in forming a social compact for ECD. This can include policy briefs, media engagements and other such publications.
› Support the development of an ECD Management Information System.
› Drive initiatives that support data sharing and reporting across DGMT’s flagship projects.
› Supporting data-driven innovations through responsive grant-making.
› Roll out ECD Connect digital platform to enable the support and monitoring of ECD programmes at scale.
› Build an evidence base through research and publishing briefs and reports to justify increased public financing to achieve universal access to the essential ECD package.
› Collaborate with key stakeholders to produce an evidence base that supports improved institutional finance and payment arrangements for ECD across various programmes (including subsidies and public employment programmes).
› Two million children aged 0–5 have access to subsidised ELPs by 2027.
› The number of children on track for early learning by the age of 4–5 increases to 50% 18 by 2025.
› The number of registered ELPs increases by 2027 and the number of ELPs without materials to support programme quality reduces.
› Community health workers support 800 000 children through home visits.
› An evidence-based Human Resource Development Strategy for ECD is in place that aims for universal coverage.
› Policy-making and regulations prioritise universal access to quality ECD.
› The number of ECD civic engagements at the local, provincial and national level increases.
› Alongside other partners, an ECD agency is set up by 2027 that incorporates all elements of the essential package.
› Increased access to data-driven decision making for ECD.
› Increased reporting on the quality of ELPs.
› A functioning Education Management Information System (EMIS) for reporting and decision-making for the Department of Basic Education.
› Regular national surveys measuring ECD programme outcomes.
› Improved availability and use of systems, evidence and data for making decisions at provincial and national level.
› Increased budget allocation for ECD from R4.9 billion to R8.3 billion within five years.
ALL CHILDREN ON TRACK BY GRADE 4
The physical height of our children is a leading indicator of the future health of the nation, its social stability and its economic prospects. Yet we are trapped by poor nutrition that damages children before they go to school and erodes human capital all along the way.
South Africa’s last national anthropometric survey was in 2016. It found that 27% of our children under five fell below the second standard deviation. That’s almost twelve times as many children as should be expected to be there. When only one in forty of our children is short-for-age – and not one in four – we will have achieved zero-stunting. There is some evidence from community surveys that stunting may be starting to decline faster than before.19 From these and other local surveys, it appears that the national prevalence may be closer to 22–23%. However, we know from a South African systematic review that declines in stunting can stall or even regress. For both these reasons, we must intensify our efforts to accelerate any gains that may have been made.
DGMT will continue to invest in a national zero-stunting campaign that seeks to intervene during the first 1 000 days of a child’s life by supporting parents and caregivers to encourage behaviour change and reduce rates of stunting. DGMT will also explore how we can leverage a child-centred food systems approach through our responsive grant-making in order to better understand and support initiatives that address food system reform, climate change and make early learning programmes hubs for nutrition.
Alongside this work, DGMT will continue to support research that measures the nutritional status, and development progress, of South Africa’s children, at both a provincial and district level, to build a strong evidence base where it has historically been sorely lacking. It will support the emergence of a strong political coalition and proto-agency, able to engage effectively with the Food and Nutrition Security Committee facilitated by the National Department of p lanning, Monitoring and Evaluation.
five-year aim:
› Reduce the prevalence of stunting for children under 5 from approximately 23% to 16% by 2027.
ALL CHILDREN ON TRACK BY GRADE 4
Mobilise critical actors (state, civil society and business) towards the goal of zero-stunting.
› Provide support to Grow Great to operationalise zerostunting strategies.
› Galvanise civil society and government to recognise stunting as a key national issue.
› Build a coalition of civil society actors who collaborate on key initiatives and advocacy strategies to reduce stunting.
› Ensure that systems for routine monitoring of key nutrition outcomes are operationalised.
Utilise a food-systems approach to leverage innovative interventions that reduce and prevent stunting.
› Explore a child-centred food-systems approach to increase access and diversity of the diets of children.
› Outline the opportunities that exist at the household and community level to reduce stunting.
› Increase investment and support innovations that improve nutritional outcomes and household food security.
› Support food system policy framing under Opportunity 3.
› The prevalence of stunting for children under 5 reduces from about 23% to 16% by 2027.
› Improved availability of data on nutrition outcomes at community level.
› Government accepts the Maternal Support Grant (MSG) as a mechanism to improve birth and stunting outcomes.
› National Department of Health (NDoH) adopts key elements of systems for supporting community healthcare workers (CHWs).
› Increased access to diverse and nutritious diets at community level.
› Increased diversity of approaches to preventing stunting in communities.
Despite significant investment in education, we know that South Africa is falling behind in critical indicators relating to reading and numeracy. Eight out of 10 Grade 4 learners cannot read for meaning in any language, and only 37% of learners in Grade 5 had acquired the basic subject knowledge and skills in maths for their grade. All of this directly impacts the trajectories of young children and their ability to contribute towards building our society and economy. The compound impact of this includes poor educational outcomes over the long term and real reductions in GD p outputs. Investing in reading and numeracy is an opportunity to transform the lives of a generation of children. We know that early learning deficits erode the benefits of formal education and that shifting these trends requires investments in early learning interventions that focus on proficiency in reading, writing and counting. Alongside this work we need to invest in a national campaign to ignite a love for reading in children, one that supports cognitive development (increased vocabulary, curiosity and communication) as well as socioemotional development – such as family cohesion, self-esteem and confidence – which in turn positively impacts reading levels, school performance and improves life chances.
DGMT has invested in the Nal’ibali national reading campaign since 2011, in the belief that the development of a national reading culture requires sustained effort over many years. Between 2011 and 2016, there was an improvement in Grade 4 reading literacy scores, as measured by the international p rogress in Reading Literacy Survey ( p IRLS). 20 Unfortunately, based on the evidence emerging from foundation-phase surveys, the social and educational disruptions caused by Covid-19 possibly mean that these gains have been reversed. All the more reason to sustain and intensify our efforts.
five-year aim:
› Reach 40% of South Africa’s children directly through a national reading campaign.
Continue to mobilise a national campaign to increase reading practice and access to reading materials in order to promote a national culture of reading.
› Drive a national campaign to promote reading for enjoyment at the sufficient scale, intensity and longevity in order to change reading behaviour in South Africa.
› Increase access to reading materials and literacy infrastructure support to expand access to the number of books found in the home, in schools and ELPs.
› Mobilise support to shift South Africa’s reading practices and behaviours through advocacy, policy engagement and direct engagement with key stakeholders in civil society, government and business.
› Support initiatives like the National Reading Barometer Survey, which seeks to measure reading practices and the culture of reading in South Africa.
Increase the number of children who can read for meaning and do maths by the time they get to Grade 4.
› Support the development of early numeracy and literacy tools and make those resources widely available.
› Improve the quality of foundation-phase numeracy and literacy instruction.
› Support evidence-based numeracy interventions to help and train new teachers.
› Ensure that numeracy and literacy instruction is evidence-based, well-resourced and appropriate for the context.
› Support accelerated learning and catch-up literacy and numeracy interventions for children in Grades 1–4, with a particular interest in new forms of NGO–DBE partnerships.
Make sure every child is ready to read and do maths by the time they go to school.
› Millions of South Africans are influenced, creating a tipping point, to build a reading culture and practice that shifts reading behaviour at home, in ELPs and in communities.
› Twenty-five per cent of children under 10 are reached through face-to-face interaction by 2024. 21
› More than 40% 22 of adults are reading regularly to children.
› The number of children who cannot read for meaning by the time they get to Grade 4 is reduced.
› The percentage of learners who have acquired basic mathematical skills and knowledge has increased. 23
Children thrive in environments where they feel safe, are nurtured, protected and loved, and where their caregivers are supported to play an active role in their lives. In South Africa, a myriad of challenges – including poverty, gender-based violence and lack of adequate parental support programmes – present barriers for children to thrive. A significant focus of the strategies under this opportunity is that caregivers cannot provide a loving and nurturing environment if they are not capacitated to do so, or they live in an environment that actively undermines their efforts. We also appreciate that caregiving is informed by parenting beliefs that are largely shaped by culture, traditions and values. We need to understand how we can support parents and caregivers at the household and community level by leveraging existing networks and shifting dominant narratives and norms about caregiving.
five-year aim:
› Develop networks of support to parents to have positive impacts on children in at least 50 000 homes.
Ensure caregiving takes place in a supportive environment.
› Develop and test different models for increasing the social capital of families of children at risk.
› Support programmes and initiatives that reduce risk factors and improve protective factors with reference to safety in the home for children (this also relates to the impact of gender-based violence and alcohol abuse in the home).
› Support evidence-based research and advocacy that highlights the importance of providing safe and loving environments (and various family nodes) that allow children to thrive.
› Support interventions (policies, technologies etc.) that improve the scalability of caregiver interventions.
Expand networks of support to vulnerable parents and caregivers.
› Support social network models that increase the social capital of households and caregivers in order to reduce vulnerability.
Shift dominant cultural norms about caregiving.
› Support initiatives that elevate and highlight the role of fathers and social fathers at the household and community level.
› Explore how caregiver-centred terms of recognition can shift dominant cultural norms and narratives around caregiving in order to develop positive parenting environments for children.
› The number of children living in supportive home environments increases.
› Embrace, the Movement for Mothers, scales up a hyper-local mother-led network that provides support, information sharing and referral pathways for mothers.
› Increasingly positive narratives surface around the importance of fatherhood, countering the view of fathers as breadwinners and disciplinarians.
› Corporal punishment reduces in the home by encouraging positive parenting.
There is evidence that many young people progress through the basic education system without gaining basic numeracy, literacy skills and the competencies required by the labour market, even when they do complete their schooling. 24 While this is acknowledged as unacceptable, systemswide improvement plans will take time to address the deep-seated causes of underperformance in public education.
However, we can accelerate learning gains by changing some of the dynamics that are failing learners, for example, school governance and management, teacher motivation, parental involvement 25 and innovative approaches to learner academic support. DGMT is particularly interested in investments that strengthen the interface between government and civil society to improve education.
five-year aim:
› Demonstrate how accelerated learning through public, civil society and private collaboration can reduce school dropout and improve learner results.
ALL YOUNG pEOpLE ON pATHWAYS TO pRODUCTIVITY
Open a new channel for quality education in public schools in South Africa.
› Expand networks of public schools and supporting NPOs that deliver quality education characterised by high management capacity, flexibility and outcomes-based accountability.
› Ensure the key features of the Western Cape collaboration school model (as agreed in legislation) are implemented.
› Actively surface and amplify emerging learnings.
Explore accelerated learning as a means to support learners failed by the education system.
› Research, develop and test accelerated learning strategies.
Elevate parents as powerful actors in their children’s education journey.
› Engage with parents and schooling communities to support partnership and co-ownership in providing quality education for children.
Harness the energy and creativity of young teachers to disrupt the status quo in education.
› Create a community of key role players who are committed to building pipelines of support and opportunities for young teachers.
› An increasing number of public schools are engaged in partnerships, with evidence of substantial improvements in learner outcomes.
› The Public School Partnerships model has strategic integrity.
› Innovative practices borne out of DGMT partnership schools are being adopted through the wider school system.
› An established set of strategies and approaches supports accelerated learning in a range of different settings.
› There is a groundswell of support for parents as their child’s first educators, imbued with a sense of power in their contribution to their child’s education.
› There is a national network of young teachers who are wellequipped, empowered and enthusiastic about remaining in the teaching profession and contributing to quality education.
In South Africa, tapping into social networks is the most common way of accessing opportunity, but most young people that are not in employment, education or training (NEET) lack the connections to find work. approximately 42% of young people in south africa (aged 15 to 24) live in households with no employed adults and fewer financial resources, making it difficult to build social and economic connections on their own.26
Young people seeking work are diverse, with differing interests and life challenges that affect their ability to connect to, and fully participate in, the workplace. Often employers do not fully recognise the constraints of transport, the need for thorough workplace orientation and the financial pressures of being the sole wage-earner in a household.
There is often a skills mismatch between the work young people look for and the skills that they have, with many young people describing a “dream job” that is quite different to their current work and educational experiences. 27, 28 There must be an expansion of work-skilling and strategies that assist young people to match their aptitudes and skills with work opportunities. Both youth development organisations and potential employers can play an important role in capacitating young people for the world of work.
We must also be aware of the changing nature of formal work, so we will continue to include the possibilities emerging from the just energy transition. 29 At the same time, the formal employment sector is shrinking, while the informal sector is growing. The former now constitutes 68.5% of jobs (down from 71.2% a decade ago) and the latter has increased from 15.5% to 18.5% over the same period. 30 Support for knowledge capital transfer into informal socio-economic networks to enable the semi-skilling of young people is central to DGMT’s work.
five-year aim:
› Support demonstrated pathways to further learning and earning opportunities for 1 million young people that are NEET.
ALL
Create opportunities that improve the prospects of different groups of young people accessing the world of work.
› Promote curriculum and work-readiness training that fit emerging opportunities in the economy.
› Promote entrepreneurial thinking among young people.
› Build on data that informs how we understand and respond to the youth unemployment crisis.
› Develop practical actions and policy recommendations to unlock efficiency and effectiveness in youth-focused policies, development and employment programmes.
Amplify initiatives that focus on improving ease of access and engagement with targeted and relevant information.
› Provide easy-to-access information about educational and financial options, learning and connections to work.
› Invest in a basic support framework that enables young people who are NEET to build their agency and pathways to opportunity.
Strengthen the impact of public funds spent on youth employment initiatives.
› Support organisations and employers to develop and share solutions that equip young people with core workreadiness skills and pathways to economic opportunity.
› There are practical pathways to work for more young people.
› Regularly released, reliable data informs youth employment interventions.
› Youth-centred and evidence-based solutions to youth unemployment are reflected in the policy positions of political parties and are acted upon.
› Young people that are NEET are equipped and supported to access further earning or learning opportunities.
› More young people continue to be economically active after exiting publicly funded employment programmes.
It is critical that once in school, a post-secondary qualification or a first work experience, young people remain in it until they are finished. 31 A focus on school dropout is needed because those who drop out prematurely experience a lack of access to higher education and training as well as fewer opportunities to participate in economic activities compared to their peers who finished their schooling. Similarly, whether the next step is work-integrated learning, work experience or a year of service in a public employment programme, young people need to be supported to remain connected. It is at these junctions that the broader ecosystem needs to work to retain the young person, providing them with further access to skills and information, and to build their sense of belonging and self-belief. This is particularly necessary in an environment where there are not enough jobs, particularly low and semi-skilled opportunities.
We need to create and advocate for youth-centred support that ensures young people are kept on a pathway to productivity and do not become discouraged. Once in work experience or work opportunities, young people need to receive onthe-job training to build necessary skills and competencies. This is why we must support organisations to function as spaces that foster meaningful economic progression for young people.
five-year aim:
› Achieve at least a 25% increase in successful student-to-work linkages and retention in first-work opportunities in support programmes funded by DGMT.
ALL YOUNG pEOpLE ON pATHWAYS TO pRODUCTIVITY
p revent school dropout.
› Direct a national campaign focused on key drivers affecting high learner dropout.
› Support interventions that are able to reduce school dropout.
Reduce the work-link barriers preventing young students from completing their postsecondary qualifications.
› Review and seek to address the obstacles preventing students in Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) from getting their certification.
› Support work-link initiatives for TVET students.
› Advocate for developing a skilled workforce through TVETs.
Invest in opportunities that spark positive behaviour change and significantly reduce youth vulnerability.
› Continue to implement a multi-faceted HIV-prevention programme focussed on young women aged 15–24 in the Buffalo City Metropolitan Municipality.
Develop socio-emotional skills in young people to support them to succeed during tough times.
› Invest in impactful initiatives that demonstrate how effective support of socio-emotional well-being equips young people to remain connected to opportunities.
› National school dropout rate reduces by 33% by 2027 (50% by 2030).
› More students exit post-secondary studies (especially TVETs) with the expected qualifications.
› There is increased access to workplace-based learning programmes (learnerships, internships and skills programmes).
› The incidence of HIV among 15–24-year-olds halves within five years in the Buffalo City Metropolitan Municipality.
› Socio-emotional skills are increasingly recognised and embedded in development, education and employment programmes.
Ultimately, the opportunities described in the previous sections must come together in the lives of individuals, in their homes and communities. Inequality is deeply spatial, especially in a country like South Africa where communities were segregated on a racial basis. Compelling research from highly acclaimed Harvard economist Raj Chetty shows how neighbourhoods shape the development of human capital. 32 This evidence illustrates the importance of placebased approaches to our work. Through our involvement in the Lesedi Solar park Trust (Lesedi) and the Letsatsi Solar park Trust (Letsatsi), we aim to test, learn and demonstrate the effectiveness of a comprehensive set of interventions concentrated in a geographical location for improving human development outcomes.
Our work in the “Lesedi and Letsatsi communities” has four key strategic goals. Our fifth goal casts a wider net as we hope to engage a broader network of change makers to allow for a constant exchange of both exploratory and tested ideas.
The sustainability of any programmatic intervention rests on local ownership and co-creation. People within the community are generally far more adept at articulating everyday barriers to and enablers of their own health, education and experience accessing opportunities than technical experts who live outside the system. Without an appreciation of local perspectives, expert-driven interventions are far less effective.
Most South Africans living in rural or “poor” communities face a number of challenges through various stages of life. This reality results in a system where those who “make it” are the exception. To turn things around, we believe that holistic investment from pre-conception to employment are critical to close opportunity gaps and open pathways to self-sufficiency.
There is a limit to the number of jobs that can be created within the status quo. This is true nationally for South Africa and hardest felt by young people from townships and rural communities. If we do not contribute to job creation locally, our skills and human capital development investments will not go very far in enabling young people to be self-sufficient adults, perpetuating an unsustainable welfare state.
Societal issues like substance abuse and gender-based violence hinder our efforts to develop the potential of people in our communities. Similarly, when communities do not have access to basic services like clean water and good sanitation, both their health and schooling outcomes are compromised.
Funding from the Renewable Independent Power Producer Programme (REIPPP) presents a wonderful opportunity to drive developmental change in some of South Africa’s poorest communities. In addition, many NGOs and philanthropic organisations work tirelessly to help vulnerable communities to escape the inequality trap. As a stakeholder in this ecosystem and a strategic investor in evidence-based programmes, we want to engage with the broader ecosystem and find a way to make a unique contribution to it.
Awareness is not enough to get people to own an intervention. We need to ensure interventions happen with constituencies and not to them. Community members need to be co-creators who bring a legitimate perspective and agency to the work. Their aspirations and concerns must be considered at every stage of decision making and they need to be meaningfully involved in the roll-out of the work. Community engagement and ownership is not simply a means to an end, but fundamentally an end in itself. If we do not intentionally hold ourselves accountable to working with the agency in communities and developing local capacity to lead, we will miss an important opportunity to secure the sustainability of our work.
five-year aim:
Work with and cultivate imaginative community leaders (existing and new leadership).
› Invest in building the capacity of local development organisations.
› Invest in the leadership capacity of councillors, advisory committees, young adults and adolescents.
› Empower and engage advisory committees.
› Support our programmes to develop local management and strategic capacity to drive their work.
› Enable communities to be active participants in their local development processes.
Cultivate community engagement and ownership.
› Develop and implement a communications strategy.
› Where possible, transition strategic management of programmes to local organisations.
› Work with community members as co-creators of strategies and implementers of the work.
› Develop a dashboard or citizen accountability tool to make visible the reach and impact of our work.
› Invest in ways that create a growing group of community champions who enable the embedding and sustainability of strategically aligned outcomes.
Initiate interventions of compassion and care.
› Make available a percentage of funds annually for donations, emergency relief and other efforts of compassion and care.
› At least 10 local development organisations are effectively driving change in their respective areas of work.
› At least 50 people are reached through a leadership development programme and effectively engaged in various developments.
› Functional advisory committees provide input on strategy and programmes, and champion the work of the community Trusts.
› Clear management skills development plans are implemented for more than 50% of our programmes.
› There is improved public participation in Integrated Development Planning (IDP) and local planning processes.
› Community members understand, value and believe in the work done by the Trusts.
› There are clear organisational transition plans wherever possible.
› Documented evidence of community involvement in all new initiatives is presented.
› Community members have up-to-date and easy access to information on the work of the Trusts.
› At least five local stakeholders are working in municipality or government championing our work.
› Community members experience the community Trusts as caring and there for them.
The Lesedi and Letsatsi Trusts offer a unique and exciting opportunity for bringing together systemic and long-term interventions that could significantly tap into South Africa’s potential in communities over time. We know that a number of the right things need to work well, simultaneously, in order to achieve certain human development outcomes from early childhood development through to employment.
The place-based focus of this work presents a few interesting opportunities for us and our programme partners. Firstly, when we invest in a particular programme, we can choose to view it as an isolated intervention, or as one which fits within an ecosystem with linkages to other interventions. The option to approach things in silo, particularly when working in a specific community, is not feasible. Failing to consider linkages between programmes and other efforts in communities can result in many inefficiencies or even in competing programmes, whereas a systemic approach has the potential to accelerate efficacy across the system.
Secondly, our programmes need to contribute towards population-level impact. The requirements of the Lesedi and Letsatsi Trusts is that we invest in people living within a 50 km radius of the power company. For some, population-level impact might mean having to target universal access, for others it might be about closing an access gap, while for behavioural interventions, the population-level impact might be achieved through critical mass. Whatever the approach, we need to learn to make population-level shifts.
Lastly, we need to be cognisant of location. Because inequality is deeply spatial, we need to be aware of the inequality that exists between wards/neighbourhoods and intentionally target efforts in a way that aligns to need. Think of Sandton and Alexandra. Opportunities for better healthcare, education and even employment are concentrated in suburban islands while the majority of south africans are confined to townships that are, by design, seas of socio-economic deprivation. This is true in Lesedi and Letsatsi. There are wards that have no ECD centres and some that do; some have community centres, and others don’t.
five-year aim:
Build love and connections for children.
Give every child the benefit of quality early childhood development.
Improve the quality of education.
› Implement programmes that help caregivers to create supportive and developmentally conducive environments.
› Pilot and test social network models that increase the social (and economic) capital of households and caregivers in order to reduce vulnerability.
› Roll out a playgroup programme.
› Commission work to enhance the quality of existing ECD centres and support them to get registered.
› Co-invest in building new ECD centres and transition some playgroup practitioners to ECD practitioners.
› Invest in initiatives that improve school management by building capacity and improving accountability around outcomes.
› Improve foundation-phase literacy and numeracy.
› Implement reading and numeracy accelerator/catch-up programmes.
Create new connections to opportunity for young people.
Build and expand student-to-work linkages.
› Provide access to targeted, relevant information that supports young people to successfully access services and opportunities, including those created by the Trusts.
› Implement a work-readiness programme.
› Invest in initiatives that reduce school dropout, including support for pregnant learners.
› Work with government to establish and strengthen academic pathways for learners exiting school in Grade 9 and to add vocational and technical streams for high school learners.
› Support poorer students to access and complete post-schooling education and training.
› Provide ongoing training for young people to succeed in work experiences or their first job.
› Initiate a process of aligning skills development to industry needs.
Create spaces and practices for integrated programme implementation.
› Guide vision and strategy by convening visioning and planning sessions around specific goals, e.g. ECD.
› Support aligned activities by facilitating dialogue among partners, setting up and supporting working groups.
› Establish shared measurement practices and systems. Manage data collection and use for learning.
› At least 100 caregivers are reached through these interventions.
› There is universal access to quality early childhood development.
› Children enter Grade R ready to learn.
› School governance and teaching improves.
› Twenty-five per cent of households with children aged 0–6 regularly read for enjoyment.
› There is a demonstrable improvement in foundation-phase literacy and numeracy scores.
› At least 50 connections are made for young people that are NEET.
› At least 50 young people complete a work-readiness programme.
› School dropout linked to learning difficulties, behaviour issues and teenage pregnancy reduces demonstrably.
› Learners engaged in technical classes within Daniëlskuil High School show improved outcomes.
› The number of learners accessing and completing TVET, college and university increases.
› 100 young people complete industry-aligned skills development programmes.
› A common agenda is defined and the partner’s individual work is increasingly aligned with the initiative’s common agenda.
› Partners increasingly communicate and coordinate their activities towards a common goal.
› Partners understand the value of sharing data and use data to adapt and refine strategies.
A survey in Tsantsabane Local Municipality, one of the main municipalities within Lesedi Trust’s catchment, found that 79% of young people in the municipality were unemployed. Most of the employed people worked in the mining industry, with the next two top employers being local retailers and the public sector. As a result of the high unemployment rate among youth, most have no income at all, or earn less than R1 000 per month. Even employed youth earn low salaries, averaging R5 000 per month or less.
This dynamic is not unique to this municipality. In fact, all the communities within both the Lesedi and Letsatsi catchment areas have relatively low economic activity and high unemployment rates. This highlights the need for our strategy to work at expanding local job opportunities.
It is worth exploring a number of untapped opportunities to stimulate labourabsorptive economic activity in these areas. In South Africa, one of the untapped opportunities is the so-called “township economy”. Another opportunity is the small, micro and medium enterprises (SMME) sector, which is believed to be contributing to 80% of all new job opportunities. Experts estimate that the hemp and cannabis industry could create as many as 130 000 jobs. 33
In addition to this, the programmatic investments made by the Trusts provide an opportunity to inject and circulate new flows of funding in these local communities. With some intentionality and strategic thinking, the Trusts’ funding presents an opportunity to create jobs and stimulate new economic activity.
five-year aim:
› Create access to new job opportunities and optimise our investment injection as an economic stimulant and job creator.
Create jobs through entrepreneurship and by stimulating new labourabsorptive industries.
› Stimulate entrepreneurship through programmes that develop and build entrepreneurial skills early.
› Invest in SMMEs and strengthen ecosystems of support for businesses to thrive.
› Identify and invest in new labour-absorptive opportunities (e.g. bee farming, cannabis industry, township economies).
› Support the development of, and connection to, markets for small businesses.
Strengthen the local food system.
› Support local business, NGOs and government stakeholders to work together to find innovative ways to improve their local food system.
› Support the growth of local food producers and enable them to access local markets.
Leverage our programmatic investments as job-creation initiatives and the associated investment injections into these communities.
› Explore and review stipend models across our investment portfolio.
› Support and incentivise our programmes to increase local expenditure as much as possible.
› Explore opportunities to attract external donor funds to co-invest in local initiatives (e.g. co-funding with government or other philanthropic funds).
› Reduced youth unemployment.
› An effective food system with early signs of improved access and food security.
› Reduced financial leakage and optimised internal circulation of funds flowing from our programmatic grants.
Our work must appreciate the intersection between the human development outcomes we seek and the context in which a life is lived. The influence that household and societal factors have on child development is well researched and profound. A compelling and growing body of scientific research indicates that children living in unusually stressful situations (such as not having enough food to eat or living in unstable housing) may experience chronic stress levels severe enough to damage the developing neural connections in their brains, impeding their ability to succeed in school and develop the social and emotional skills they will need to function well as adults. Exposure to violence has also been shown to contribute to mental health problems during childhood and adolescence. 34
Similarly, a lack of access to basic services like clean water and good sanitation is a health risk and impacts access to education. Tsantsabane Local Municipality, for example, has been having water issues for a number of years now, owing mainly to the debt the municipality is struggling to pay to the Sedibeng Water Board. 35 This has a direct effect on ECD centres, playgroups and schools that are forced to close when water supply is shut off. Another challenge is that when water is provided, it is not clean. people from these communities have to boil water before use; in schools, children often drink the water straight from the tap and get sick. In Tokologo Local Municipality in the Free State, theft of water infrastructure has resulted in issues with water supply and the same knock-on effects on schools can be observed.
Another important contextual element that we need to manage is population trends. The population in Tsantsabane Local Municipality has grown by 66% since 2001, or 3% annually. South Africa’s annual population growth rate is 1.2%. One can attribute this higher-than-average growth in population to the mining and renewable energy activity in the area. As a consequence, schools are overcrowded and some families struggle to find a place for their children in school. Other infrastructure challenges include the unequal access to safe communal facilities like community halls, multi-purpose centres from which programmes can run, as well as ECD centres. Some neighbourhoods are better serviced than others. DGMT cannot afford to build new schools and should not pay off municipal debts. But we also cannot ignore these very real threats to the human development outcomes that we are committed to. The Lesedi and Letsatsi strategy is broad, which means we need to effectively prioritise and think creatively about how we mobilise other funding pockets around priority areas.
five-year aim:
› Collaborate effectively with community stakeholders, government and other funders to drive positive social and environmental change.
Reduce social and economic harms related to substance abuse. Develop targeted solutions that prevent gender-based violence and femicide. Improve health and nutrition outcomes for children. Support municipalities to improve the delivery of basic services. Enable improved waste management.
› Implement substance abuse prevention programmes, with a particular focus on adolescents and young adults.
› Improve access to treatment and counselling services.
› Support advocacy and/or programmatic initiatives that improve law enforcement and limit alcohol trading times.
› Implement prevention programmes that shift harmful gender norms and reduce risk factors linked to power and poverty.
› Work collaboratively with stakeholders to implement a package of interventions that prevent gender-based violence.
› Implement interventions that reduce nutritional stunting.
› Improve access to quality health-care services.
› Implement interventions that reduce the prevalence of foetal alcohol syndrome.
› Improve access to basic services in communities, working collaboratively and in support of the municipalities and government.
› Support municipalities to access and optimally leverage existing government initiatives such as Municipal Infrastructure Grants and the upcoming roll-out of the National Infrastructure Plan.
› Test and invest in initiatives that systematically reduce litter, illegal dumping and improve waste-management practices.
› Work with municipalities to improve the implementation of land-use management plans and support them to keep up with the rate of urbanisation.
› Empower communities with the information and language they need to interrogate land-use management decisions in the IDP processes.
Mobilise funding for work in Lesedi and Letsatsi.
› Attract strategically aligned funders to the Lesedi and Letsatsi areas.
› Mobilise private-sector and other funding in support of necessary infrastructure investments.
› Facilitate a process that convenes relevant stakeholders around a vision for change in ECD and/or youth development.
› The number of adolescents and young adults with changed narratives and behaviours around alcohol increases.
› The number of people accessing treatment and counselling services increases demonstrably.
› The availability of alcohol and drugs reduces.
› There is a demonstrable shift in harmful gendered perceptions.
› The social and economic vulnerability of women and young girls reduces.
› There are age-appropriate programmes for children that enable them to unlearn/learn new narratives while using engaging pedagogy like sports and play.
› The prevalence of nutritional stunting among 0–5-year olds reduces demonstrably.
› Foetal alcohol syndrome reduces demonstrably.
› Access to water, hygiene and sanitation improves.
› There are more clean communities with visibly reduced litter and better waste-management practices/models.
› There is productive use of community halls and new spaces for adolescents and young people to benefit from development programmes.
› Philanthropic, business and public funds are secured to support the programmes and the broader strategy.
› At least two co-impact funding initiatives are launched and managed.
DGMT is committed to a vision of a South Africa where every person has the opportunity to fulfil their potential. This national vision compels us to share effective strategies, practices and programmatic interventions in service to scaling impact across many communities.
Our work in the place-based integration portfolio, as well as the broader DGMT, identifies and invests in public innovations that can help many South Africans escape the inequality trap and realise their potential. We hope to achieve this by being appropriately plugged into South Africa’s public innovation ecosystem and by leveraging the expanse of our own network and experience.
There is a limit to the number of communities we can reach with our funding and efforts. Fortunately, that isn’t a limitation to enabling the effective scaling of impactful work. We need to find ways to participate in and enable an exchange of ideas and solutions between ourselves and other change makers across the country – particularly those who are trying to leverage the power of place and its impact on social and economic mobility.
five-year aim:
› Surface and present the evidence of working approaches to enable scaling of impact across communities.
Share effective programmatic interventions with other communityfocused change makers.
› Leverage the expanse of DGMT’s network to surface and package effective public innovations.
› Support effective interventions to responsibly scale to other REIPPP-funded programmes.
› Make use of new and existing platforms to learn from and share with a broader community of change makers.
› Place-based synergy team scales the impact of proven interventions into other REIPPP projects.
DGMT views itself as an enabler, drawing on the work and experience of civil society organisations and other implementing partners and funders. It holds a privileged position as an independent foundation, with windows into the work of partners in local communities and relatively good access to policy-makers, the media, private sector and other investors. We are constantly aware of and inspired by the commitment and energy of those in our networks for change.
1. Kingdon, J. 2003. Agendas, alternatives and public policies. New York: Pearson.
2. Statistics South Africa. 2017. South Africa demographic and health survey 2016: key indicator report. Report no. 03-00-09. https://www. statssa.gov.za/publications/Report%2003-00-09/Report%2003-00-092016.pdf
3. Van der Berg, S. et al. 2019. The cost of repetition in South Africa. Stellenbosch Working Paper Series No. WP13/2019. https://www.ekon. sun.ac.za/wpapers/2019/wp132019
4. Adapted from Christensen, C. 2002. The innovator’s dilemma. Boston, MA: Harvard Press.
5. Centola, D. et al. 2018. Experimental evidence for tipping points in social convention. Science 360, pp. 1116–1119. doi: 10.1126/science. aas8827
6. West, G. 2017. Scale: the universal laws of life and death in organisms, cities and companies. New York: Penguin Press.
7. Deaton, A. 2013. The great escape: health, wealth, and the origins of inequality. Princeton University Press.
8. Hall, B.L. 2013. Knowledge, democracy and action: an introduction. In: B.L. Hall et al. (eds). Knowledge, democracy and action: community–university research partnerships in global perspectives. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
9. Deaton, The great escape.
10. Garcia, J. et al. 2017. Quantifying the life-cycle benefits of a prototypical early childhood program. NBER Working Paper No. 23479. https:// heckmanequation.org/www/assets/2017/01/w23479.pdf
11. Engle, P. et al. Strategies for reducing inequalities and improving developmental outcomes for young children in low-income and middleincome countries. Lancet 2011(378), pp. 1339–1359.
12. Chetty, R. et al. 2022. Social capital I: measurement and associations with economic mobility. Nature 608(7921), pp. 108–121.
13. Resources available at UN Environment Programme. 2022. https://wesr.unep.org/
14. Pride and aspiration can be gauged through participation and ownership of community issues and programmes by community members. However, this term needs more definition and measures that will help us focus and better define outputs.
15. Angelsen, A. et al. 1995. Poverty and the environment. Bergen: Comparative Research Programme on Poverty. https://www.crop.org/ Viewfile.aspx?id=1105
16. Environmental degradation can be defined broadly as encompassing climate variability, loss of biodiversity, deforestation, land degradation, waste and pollution.
17. Statistics South Africa. 2020. More than 60% of South African children are poor. Media release, 7 July. https://www.statssa.gov. za/?p=13438
18. Extrapolated from the Thrive by Five Index. https://thrivebyfive.co.za
19. Yaya, S. et al. 2020. Does economic growth reduce childhood stunting? A multicountry analysis of 89 demographic and health surveys in sub-Saharan Africa. BMJ Global Health 5(1):e002042. doi: 10.1136/bmjgh-2019-002042
20. Gustafsson, M. 2020. A revised PIRLS 2011 to 2016 trend for South Africa and the importance of analysing the underlying microdata. Working Papers 02/2020, Stellenbosch University, Department of Economics.
21. This includes reading clubs, partnerships and activations such as World Read Aloud Day.
22. Currently 25% – South African Book Development Council. 2016. National survey into the reading and book reading behaviour of adult South Africans. https://www.sabooksellers.com/wp-content/assets/Final-Report-NRS-2016.pdf
23. Reddy, V. et al. 2022. The South African TIMSS 2019 Grade 5 results: building achievement and bridging achievement gaps. Cape Town: HSRC Press.
24. Delannoy, A. et al. 2020. Why is youth unemployment so intractable in South Africa? A synthesis of evidence at the micro-level. Journal of Applied Youth Studies 3, pp. 115–131. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43151-020-00012-6
25. Parents are defined here as significant carers of children, whether biological or not. See DGMT. 2019. The human factor: the heart of parenting – how the alchemy of love, hope and fear prepares children for life. https://dgmt.co.za/the-human-factor2/
26. Statistics South Africa. 2016. Community survey 2016. Accessed via Youth Capital. 2022. Linked in: rising through social and economic connections. https://youthcapital.co.za/linked-in-werise-socialconnections-brief/
27. JobStarter. 2021. Youth employment interventions and ICT4D: lessons from a work-seeker support platform serving South Africa’s most vulnerable young work seekers. In: A. De Lannoy, M. Langa and H. Brooks (eds). Youth in South Africa: agency, (in)visibility and national development. MISTRA.
28. Delannoy, Why is youth unemployment so intractable?
29. ILO. 2022. Global employment trends for youth 2022: investing in transforming futures for young people. Geneva.
30. Statistics South Africa. 2023. Gender series volume VII: informal economy, 2013–2019. http://www.statssa.gov.za/publications/ Report-03-10-23/Report-03-10-232019.pdf
31. Mncayi, P. and Shuping, K. 2021. Factors affecting labour absorption in South Africa. Journal of Economic and Financial Sciences 14(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.4102/jef.v14i1.603
32. Chetty, R. 2018. The opportunity atlas: mapping the childhood roots of social mobility. National Bureau of Economic Research.
33. Vanek, M. 2022. South Africa looks to cannabis, hemp industry to create jobs. Bloomberg. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/ articles/2022-02-10/south-africa-looks-to-cannabis-hemp-industry-to-create-jobs
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DGMT is a South African foundation built on endowments from Douglas and Eleanor Murray to promote charitable, educational, philanthropic and artistic purposes within South Africa. Douglas Murray was the son of, and successor to, John Murray, the founder of the Cape-based construction company, Murray and Stewart, which was established in 1902. This company merged in 1967 with Roberts Construction to become Murray & Roberts, with the parent Trusts as the main shareholders. In 1979, the Trusts combined to form the DG Murray Trust as the main shareholder before the company was publicly listed. Subsequently, the Trust relinquished its ownership to a major finance house. Eleanor Murray remained actively engaged in the work of the Trust until her death in 1993.
The Foundation is now the holder of a portfolio of widely diversified assets, which reduces the risks in funding the achievement of its strategic objectives. DGMT currently distributes about R200-million per year and leverages and manages a similar amount of funding through joint ventures with other investors.
DGMT’s ultimate goal is to create an ethical and enabling environment where human needs and aspirations are met; where every person is given the opportunity to fulfil their potential, for both personal benefit and for that of the wider community. By investing in South Africa’s potential we aim to:
ɸ Create opportunity for personal growth and development that will encourage people to achieve their potential.
ɸ Help reduce the gradients that people face in trying to seize those opportunities.
ɸ Affirm the value and dignity of those who feel most marginalised and devalued by society.
TRUSTEES Mvuyo Tom (Chairperson) - John Volmink - Ameen Amod - Shirley Mabusela
Murphy Morobe - Hugo Nelson - Maria Mabetoa - Diane Radley - Michael Kahn
CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER David Harrison
