It’s our 35th Anniversary

Launch of the Barry Streek Garden at Community House

WE ARE CELEBRATING 35 YEARS OF PARTNERSHIPS IN RURAL SOUTH AFRICA

Book Launch – Rural Voice II: 35 stories for 35 years https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ou2twSmi7WQHwULqjeZxybBRpXdM_OCV/view?usp=sharing

The Barry Streek Awards

Date: 14 November 2019

Time: 17:00 – 20:00

Venue: Community House, 41 Salt River Road, Salt River

Guest Speaker: Mr John Jeffrey, Deputy Minister of Justice and Correctional Services

The Social Change Assistance Trust has for 35 years worked tirelessly in partnership with rural communities in various parts of the country to promote access to justice, food security, gender equality, and youth development. In the early years of this partnership, most of these communities did not have a single organisation serving local poor people. Our role as a grant-making organisation has contributed in providing lifeblood to local organisations in remote parts of the country in a manner that ensures sustainability of development projects and responsiveness to local needs.

This year, we celebrate the resilience of this partnership and our ground-breaking work in local communities still facing challenges of chronic unemployment, inequality, hunger and poverty. We will be launching a book Rural Voice II: 35 Stories for 35 Years with stories from our grantees, staff and trustees. We will also be launching a Barry Streek Garden at Community House in honour of our founding trustee, and will present the Barry Streek Awards for the best partners in certain categories. Award recipients will receive R10,000 to spend in any local development initiative of their choice. We will also have a photographic exhibition acknowledging the work of our partners.

Joanne Harding, Director of SCAT, says reaching the milestone of 35 years is no mean feat and is in part due to forward thinking trustees who in the late 90s decided to invest in a building which the organisation sold for a healthy profit in 2008, and in the decision in the early 2000s to invest in Ditikeni Investments (an investment fund set up for the sustainability of the NGOs that invested). These investments make up SCAT’s sustainability fund, have provided a cushion when needed, and flexibility to try new things. “Sustainability is also about the governance of the organisation and we are extremely grateful to our founder trustees, those who worked with them, and our current trustees who took the baton and have carried the vision and purpose. We remain thankful to Barry Streek a founder trustee we lost to a brain tumour in 2006. We honour him with this book, an indigenous garden in Community House, and the Barry Streek Awards. Barry loved the written word and we know he would have been proud of what we have co-created with our partners.”

Nkosikhulule Xhawulengweni Nyembezi, Chairperson of the Board of Trustees, says several adaptations and faithful implementation of a bottom-up approach has enabled SCAT to promote locally driven solutions to access to justice, gender equality, youth empowerment, service delivery and food security through sustained partnerships with civil society organisations that share the same vision to promote social justice and learning. “We don’t want this anniversary to so much be about understanding our milestones through a single voice. Instead, as a Trust, we also want beneficiaries to be able to use it to tell their stories and to say their own personal thanks. Hopefully, the experience will energise each one of us to work together to do more in the next 35 years and beyond to ensure that poverty, inequality and other social ills are eradicated.”

The following seven organisations have been nominated under the following categories:

1. Resilience – Port St Johns Advice Office in the Eastern Cape Province for surviving turbulent times without donor funding. The office was closed for two years (2002 – 2003) but managed to reopen and to continue serving the community. The community run a growing beekeeping project that sells honey to a growing customer base.

• Fundraising Incentive Scheme – Inter-Church Local Development Agency in the Eastern Cape Province for its work in communities in Uitenhage and surrounding areas. For the past four years the organisation has fundraised close to R70,000 and SCAT has matched the amount.

• Youth Empowerment – Dordrecht Advice Office in the Eastern Cape Province for pioneering a successful Youth Bank that has extended loans of over R2,000 to three recycling projects in the community. This project is a model for other SCAT funded Youth Bank projects.

• Gender and Women Empowerment – Witzenberg Rural Development Centre in the Western Cape Province for championing the rights of women on farms in Ceres and surrounding areas who are facing farm evictions, gender-based-violence, and unfair labour practices. https://mg.co.za/article/2019-03-08-00-rapists-back-at-school-with-victims

• Community Involvement – Sandveld Local Development Agency in the Western Cape Province for its work in Graafwater. The organisation uses innovative models to meaningfully involve community members in development projects and has recently fundraised for a computer hub facility for the local community.

• Food Security – Atamelang Cooperative in the Free State Province for its work in Tweefontein and surrounding areas. The organisation is best known for its three communal food garden projects with produce sold locally and in places such as Thaba Nchu and Bloemfontein. Other beneficiaries from the food gardens include the local clinic, a local home-based care project, and targeted vulnerable households. The organisation was awarded as the Best Emerging Agricultural Project in the Free State, and also represented the province in the National Emerging Farmer competition.

• Governance and Management – Kgatelopele Self-Development Forum in the Northern Cape Province for its work in Danielskuil and surrounding areas. The organisation services the communities efficiently and was recognised in 2017 by the Northern Cape Department for Social Development as the “best governed community based organisation in the province”.