The DGMT Learning Lunch
The DG Murray Trust
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The Learning Lunch is an opportunity for NPO teams to be exposed to new ideas, discover what others are learning, and reflect on what that means for their own implementation and strategy. Visit www.learninglunch.dgmt.co.za for the full experience and to access the podcasts and instruction for a ±30-minute group reflection.
Available episodes
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Aug 4, 2023
The Learning Lunch - Community ownership is not a means to an end
If you work in civil society or the socioeconomic development sector, you have probably heard, or used, the term “community ownership” because it aligns with broader goals of promoting social equity, empowering local communities and sustainable development.
Community ownership goes beyond passive involvement or consultation and aims to empower communities to actively participate in decision-making and take responsibility for outcomes. In principle, civil society organisations and development experts use this term to describe communities with a significant degree of control and influence over projects, initiatives, or resources that directly affect them.
The principle underpinning “community ownership” is that people from within a community are more adept at articulating the barriers and enablers to their own development than technical experts from outside.
In this Nourish & Flourish podcast, we talk about barriers and enablers of community ownership. We speak to Sinazo Nkwelo, Director of DGMT’s Place-based Synergies portfolio.
Explore more here: https://dgmt.co.za/community-ownership-is-not-a-means-to-an-end/
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Aug 4, 2023
The Learning Lunch - Fellowships for social change
Civil society organisations, in their form and function, are distinct from corporations and the state. But this doesn’t preclude them from using programmes and strategies that are also used by governments and businesses to shape societal outcomes. Running a fellowship programme is an example of this. Generally speaking, fellowships are funded, short-term opportunities, focused on professional, academic or personal development. Fellowships facilitate interpersonal connections and provide individuals with the opportunity for self-reflection, experiential learning, cultural immersion and community-building. These experiences can lead to the development of mutual understanding, trust, and shared values.
Through fellowships, civil society organisations can build energetic communities or networks that have a creative life of their own. But the scaling properties of fellowships are notoriously difficult to define and measure.
In this Deep Dive podcast, we speak to Carol-Ann Foulis from DGMT’s Innovation Fellowship; Rumbi Görgens from the Mamandla Fellowship, and Andisiwe Hlungwane from Teachers Can about how they are using fellowships for social change.
Explore more here: https://dgmt.co.za/fellowships-for-social-change/
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Aug 3, 2023
The Learning Lunch - Communications tools & active citizenry
Many civil society organisations (CSOs) have placed promoting active citizenry at the core of their strategies. Generally speaking, active citizenry refers to individuals participating in the social and political affairs of their communities to promote equity and inclusion, improve living conditions and hold elected officials accountable.
The role of civil society organisations in building an engaged citizenry should not be understated. They play a crucial role by creating platforms, providing resources, and fostering an enabling environment for individuals to engage in civic and social activities. By harnessing the power of communications tools, active citizenry can be promoted effectively by increasing awareness, facilitating dialogue, mobilising individuals, and fostering a sense of collective responsibility and participation.
In this Best Bites podcast, we are talking about communications tools for promoting active citizenry. We speak to two people who are involved in digital advocacy and network building in civil society: Zamayirha Peter, Communications Manager atACTIVATE! Change Drivers, and Emma O’Shaughnessy, Project Lead of Amplify, Mobilise, Change.
Explore more here: https://dgmt.co.za/communications-tools-active-citizenry/
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Apr 17, 2023
The Learning Lunch - Disrupting harmful gender norms with role models
Gender norms are shared beliefs, ideas and expectations about how men and women are supposed to be and act, according to a classification system that categorises people as either male or female, known as a gender binary. These social principles are internalised from a young age and can shape people’s livelihoods and life chances by giving boys and men the advantage over girls, women and other genders.
Gender norms are not static; they vary according to culture and can change over time. But harmful norms that perpetuate inequality and discrimination persist, impacting people’s access to healthcare, education, employment and other economic opportunities. Harmful gender norms also perpetuate power asymmetries between men and women, manifesting in different forms of gender-based violence (GBV). In South Africa, and the rest of the world, harmful gender norms and discrimination are considered to be key drivers of gender-based violence.
This is why comprehensive strategies aimed at preventing GBV also seek to reshape gender norms in a positive way. Disrupting harmful gender norms requires strategies and programmes that challenge inequalities. It involves rethinking gender hierarchies, roles and binaries while questioning the root causes of inequality and systems of oppression. It must start early in homes, schools and communities. Although parents play a big role in enforcing or disrupting gender norms, adolescents are also heavily influenced by their peers. This is why we need to embed positive norms early in a child’s life in educational spaces. Outside the home, schools are spaces for socialisation and personal growth where young people are exposed to role models.
In this Deep Dive podcast, we look at ways to entrench positive norms from a young age, starting from children attending creches to young adolescents in school. We speak to Lindokuhle Msele, Project Lead at Bumb’Ingomso; Kwanda Ndoda, innovation manager at DGMT, AND Wessel Van Der Berg, MenCare Officer at Equimundo.
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Apr 12, 2023
The Learning Lunch - What does it mean to scale?
Civil society organisations and innovators are rightly concerned with scaling their interventions to reach more people. In the socioeconomic development sector, terms like scaling up, out and deep are commonplace. But depending on who you speak to you may get a nuanced interpretation of each term. For instance, ‘scaling up’ typically refers to output, but it could also mean impacting laws and policies. ‘Scaling out’ generally refers to replicating projects in different settings, in so doing impacting a greater number of people. And, the term ‘scaling deep’ refers to the quality of the intervention or its rootedness in culture and practices.
Clearly, experts have varying opinions on the topic. Lately, researchers supported by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) are questioning our inherent assumptions about scaling, and are forcing us to think about whether ‘bigger is always better’. Their approach known as ‘Scaling Science’ is understood as a justified and coordinated focus on impact at optimal scale, and it may already be part of your work in one way or another.
There are different ways to think about scale and it’s useful to think about the topic with a specific real-world challenge in mind. The food system is an ideal example. We all need nutritious food to live healthy lives so it stands to reason that the topic of scale and food are inextricably linked. But the global network of diverse businesses, growers and suppliers has scaled in such a way that it’s had negative consequences for people and the environment. More than a third of global greenhouse gas emissions are attributed to the way we produce, process and package foods, according to a study backed by the United Nations.
In this Best Bites podcast, we explore different ways to scale by looking at interventions to promote sustainable food systems. We speak to Scott Drimie who has been part of the leadership collective of the Southern Africa Food Lab since its inception and is also an adjunct professor at Stellenbosch University’s Department of Global Health.
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Apr 11, 2023
The Learning Lunch - Zero-rating: a bridge across the digital divide
Mobile technology has the potential to transcend structural divides and enhance access to services that could accelerate socioeconomic development. However, apps and digital offerings that could link marginalised groups to much-needed resources are not being used effectively because prepaid data is unaffordable to most South Africans. Yet, if they had access to the information and services offered online by public benefit organisations, it would improve their quality of life and grow our economy.
Amid persistent lobbying from organisations like DGMT for zero-rating, new regulations began to take effect in 2020. The onset of the Covid-19 pandemic made zero-rating all the more urgent. The forced closure of schools and early learning centres across the country meant that teaching and learning had to move online.
The National State of Disaster and provisional spectrum regulations forced mobile operators to zero-rate a wide range of websites. Although these obligations ended in April 2022, there have been positive developments since. The biggest breakthrough coincided with a multibillion-rand broadband auction. One of the conditions of new spectrum licences is that *all mobile content provided by registered public benefit organisations (PBOs) must be zero-rated, with the operational costs borne by the network operators.
*However, the mechanism to facilitate this is not yet in place. So, DGMT has offered to set up and maintain a single registry for PBOs (to register PBOs and monitor digital content) or to provide funding for ICASA to do so.
In this Nourish & Flourish podcast, we talk about why mobile network operators have *a legal obligation to zero-rate* the content of public benefit organisations, and how civil society can make sure this obligation is met. We speak to Mignon Hardie, Managing Director at Life Choices and the former executive director of FunDza Literacy Trust – an organisation that offers free reading resources to young people online; and David Harrison, CEO of the DG Murray Trust, which has long been lobbying for zero-rating.
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Jan 16, 2023
The Learning Lunch - Scaling up with social employment
*In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, social employment emerged as one of the levers that could stimulate the country’s economic recovery. As part of a host of publicly funded interventions, the South African government sought to centre and support the work already being done by civil society organisations to enable community-driven solutions to local problems through a Social Employment Fund (SEF). This kind of work includes health and caregiving work, food security and nutrition, youth support and recreation, community safety and interventions to stem gender-based violence, among others. Typically, these are activities that contribute to the “common good” rather than private goods and services.
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In November 2021, civil society organisations applied to be part of the SEF. By 2022, 28 ‘Strategic Implementing Partners’ (also known as SIPs) were chosen from various parts of the country. In its pilot phase, the Social Employment Fund sought to create 50 000 jobs in a range of sectors as diverse as education support and infrastructure development. The jobs created by the stimulus package must contribute to work for the common good and should be accessible to unemployed people without formal education or prior work experience.
In this podcast, we explore the concept of social employment, what civil society organisations have learned about driving social employment, and what it will take for greater public investment in social employment initiatives. We are joined by Katie Huston, Head of Research, Innovation and Impact at Nal’ibali, Sibongile Khumalo Executive Director of the Learning Trust and Andrew Boraine, CEO of the Western Cape Economic Development Partnership.
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*Click here to learn more about the topic, to download the take-away instructions and to access additional information and view the complimentary bites.
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The Learning Lunch features three types of episodes: Deep Dives; Nourish & Flourish; and Best Bites. Click on the tabs above to read more about them and to select a podcast that you would like to listen to from the category.
Each podcast/learning lunch session is structured as follows:
The Main Meal - A 30 minute podcast
The Takeaways - Instruction for a ±30-minute group reflection
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Jan 16, 2023
The Learning Lunch - Keeping it real with #keready
*Young people make up a third of South Africa’s population and are a key demographic for social, economic and political change. According to South Africa’s National Youth Policy, as well as its National Youth Commission Act (1996), the demographic of ‘youth’ is anybody between the ages of 14 and 35 years. As a category of analysis, this demographic is far from homogenous, yet young people are often perceived in the public imagination as an idle, unruly, and terrifying group of people who threaten the stability of the country.
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It’s not surprising that many young people are distrustful of the government, because of a breakdown in service delivery, corruption at different levels of government, and the scarcity of opportunities for upward income and social mobility for young people in low-resource communities.
When the government is considered to be out of touch and untrustworthy, young people aren’t likely to respond favourably to state-sponsored information, even if it’s in the public interest and for the common good. Instead, they tend to rely on information from their peers and professionals or influencers their own age. However, too often, older people, or those far removed from the reality of young people, are the ones making decisions on their behalf.
So, what does this mean for civil society organisations trying to motivate healthcare-seeking behaviour, active citizenry and agency among the youth?
The #keready campaign was confronted with this question when it launched in February 2022 with the objective of encouraging youth participation in the rollout of Covid-19 vaccinations. Initially, #keready positioned itself as a ‘youth Covid-19 vaccination movement’ with its #keready2flex Challenge, but it has since evolved into a movement that seeks to enhance healthcare-seeking behaviour among young people.
#keready aimed to put young people in control of the message, creating incentives for their participation in vaccination programmes and public health activities, as well as offering unfiltered health information.
No jargon and no judgement – these are some of the #keready principles for communication and mobilisation. The creative minds running #keready are part of DGMT’s Demand Acceleration Task Team, who were tasked with driving public communication and awareness about the Covid-19 vaccine programme. These creatives worked with the National Department of Health, but they were determined to make sure that #keready was branded as an initiative for young people, by young people – not a government branded project. The initiative’s frank, unfiltered approach of providing health information from young doctors for young people, bolstered its credibility. The initiative’s use of ‘kasi’ lingo made the communication palatable and relatable to its target audience.
In this Best Bites podcast, we hear from Lebo Motshegoa, youth mobiliser and content lead for the Demand Acceleration Task Team about #keready's strategy for driving positive behaviour change among young people. We also talk to Dr Saira Carim, a young doctor who is part of the #keready team.
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*Click here to learn more about the topic, to download the take-away instructions and to access additional information and view the complimentary bites.
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The Learning Lunch features three types of episodes: Deep Dives; Nourish & Flourish; and Best Bites. Click on the tabs above to read more about them and to select a podcast that you would like to listen to from the category.
Each podcast/learning lunch session is structured as follows:
The Main Meal - A 30 minute podcast
The Takeaways - Instruction for a ±30-minute group reflection
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Jan 16, 2023
The Learning Lunch - Social Connections
*Inequality of opportunity means that every child does not start their life with the same chances. Inherited circumstances such as race, gender, socioeconomic status and place of birth affect their likelihood for upward income and social mobility. A growing body of research is telling us that people’s social connections predict mobility. Harvard researchers have mapped the childhood roots of upward social mobility, demonstrating how neighbourhood factors shape human capital development. Pathways to social mobility are weakest in fractured communities with high levels of poverty. In South Africa where 10% of the population owns 80% of the wealth, the bottom half of the population is socially and economic disconnected from the rest, setting them up for life-long underachievement and exclusion.
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The economic value of social connections is not a new concept; but two new studies out of the United States are reigniting public interest in the topic. Building on their previous work, Harvard economist Raj Chetty and a team of researchers found that cross-class social connections are among the strongest predictors of upward income mobility. They call this economic connectedness.
For many people, exclusion from influential and powerful social circles are shaped by factors outside their control, including their race, gender, level of education, class and geography. However, connecting to people you would not otherwise interact with has the potential to spark innovation and create new economic value.
Social connections have economic value but they also have the potential to shape the political and social fabric of the country. Experience has shown us that social networks of unlikely people have the potential to spark positive change. The bigger the network, the more energy they have – because they draw on a growing diversity of ideas and expertise.
In this podcast, we explore strategies to promote social and economic connectedness in all its forms with Rejane Woodroffe – Director at Bulungla Incubator, Adam Cooper – Senior Researcher at Human Sciences Research Council and Lihle Mbikwana, programme manager at the Vibrant Village initiative.
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*Click here to learn more about the topic, to download the take-away instructions and to access additional information and view the complimentary bites.
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The Learning Lunch features three types of episodes: Deep Dives; Nourish & Flourish; and Best Bites. Click on the tabs above to read more about them and to select a podcast that you would like to listen to from the category.
Each podcast/learning lunch session is structured as follows:
The Main Meal - A 30 minute podcast
The Takeaways - Instruction for a ±30-minute group reflection
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Aug 23, 2022
The Learning Lunch - How to keep volunteers motivated and engaged
*Doing voluntary work carries several benefits for the volunteers themselves, for the organisation hosting them, and for prospective employers. Volunteer work can help young people to gain work experience and explore their passions and strengths. If they volunteer in civil society, they learn about some of the country’s most pressing social issues. There is also a business case to be made for companies to support youth volunteerism.*
With more than 250 thousand non-profit organisations registered with the Department of Social Development (DSD), these organisations have the national footprint to upskill young people by making them central to the delivery of programmes. Volunteers working in civil society participate in programme delivery, marketing and even fundraising. So, to meet the social service needs of beneficiaries, it’s important for civil society organisations to understand the needs and motivations of their volunteers to allow for effective knowledge sharing, transfer of skills, and of course, retention of their volunteer complement.
However, keeping volunteers committed and engaged can be a challenge for capacity-strapped NPOs. If they are not paid, what makes volunteers sustain their work? What keeps them motivated?
Researchers have attempted to understand the factors that influence motivation, with most organisational theories beginning with the idea that the key to continued volunteer involvement lies in matching individuals with organisations that can make it possible for them to meet their goals.
In this podcast, we speak to Tiffany Schouw, Programmes Assistant at Action Volunteers Africa (AVA). We also hear from Romy Heldsinger CEO at forgood.co.za – an online platform that connects people to causes. Lastly, we hear from Bulelani Futshane, Programmes National Coordinator at Nal’ibali. We also speak to volunteers about their personal experiences. Each contributor brings a valuable angle to the discussion.
Click here to learn more about the topic, to download the take-away instructions and to access additional information and view the complimentary bites.
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The Learning Lunch features three types of episodes: Deep Dives; Nourish & Flourish; and Best Bites. Click on the tabs above to read more about them and to select a podcast that you would like to listen to from the category.
Each podcast/learning lunch session is structured as follows:
The Main Meal - A 30 minute podcast
The Takeaways - Instruction for a ±30-minute group reflection
playlist_add
Aug 23, 2022
The Learning Lunch - Is there a sweet spot to working with government?
*Civil society is made up of thousands of different actors with varying degrees of formality. These actors play different roles in society; some look long term at broader structural issues, others are focused on short-term goals, such as ensuring access to food relief.
*These organisations have different strategies for engaging with government depending on their objective. Some focus on holding government accountable and transforming the state by rattling the status quo. Others play more of a collaborative role to boost government’s capacity.
Given the composition and size of the sector, civil society can be relatively quick in responding in times of crisis with a nuanced understanding of community needs. Whereas governments are large and slow bureaucratic entities with onerous legal and administrative obligations. The ongoing challenge in the working relationship between government and civil society is that too often government prefers to treat civil society exclusively as a servi…
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Aug 23, 2022
The Learning Lunch - Stronger together: building strategic coalitions in civil society
*In South Africa, young people continue to be disadvantaged in a labour market where the youth unemployment rate is higher than the national average. In increasingly tough times, unemployment statistics paint a bleak picture. Unfortunately, and counter-productively, young people are often blamed for their own predicament. There is a prevailing perception of them as lacking drive, optimism and motivation. But this could not be further from the truth.
*Many organisations in the youth development sector are working to change these perceptions and unlock opportunities for young people. The sector is no short of innovation, but it lacks a unifying strategy to get behind. It needs a high-level plan of action modelling the key levers that will unlock possibility for young people from the individual level to systemic change.
This is where Youth Capital is making a difference by seizing an opportunity to build momentum around an ‘Action Plan’ for the sector. Youth Capital is a campaign th…
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Apr 28, 2022
The Learning Lunch - Systems thinking for social innovation
*How can we explore and create new approaches for achieving a more equal society that tackles both social and environmental challenges? How can we reimagine social systems and institutions to bring about positive change? We need to start at the very beginning, by challenging the premises on which existing social structures are based.
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Systems thinking is about investigating what set of factors and interactions are contributing to or could contribute to a possible outcome. The world is complex, so our thinking should be complex as well. By making it a habit to consider and reconsider how our own role might be connected to others, we can mitigate impact and work together to create better solutions.
Systems thinking is a great tool to remind us to always consider the bigger picture. While it's easy to see how to take things apart, it can be much more challenging to understand how the individual parts interact to make up the big picture. Before sitting down on your own or with a team to…
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Apr 28, 2022
The Learning Lunch - Exceptional storytelling with Embrace
*Storytelling can be used in the non-profit sector as a means of listening and sharing, gaining trust within your network and shaping how you move forward with your work. In this podcast, Embrace Movement for Mothers shares their unique best practices when it comes to storytelling and making the mother a powerful ally in their activism - not only in relation to the child but as a key player socially, economically and politically in South Africa.
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Embrace promotes a connected and thriving start to motherhood for every new mother in South Africa. They have adopted a people-driven approach to supporting mothers as the primary ‘simple, loving connection’ in their children’s life. A key part of this people-driven approach has been to instil a storytelling methodology that sheds light on the stories of willing mothers to build solidarity with the movement.
A good example of this is in 2018, during Women’s Month, Embrace decided to tell the stories of 31 mothers over 31 days.
Rumbi…
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Apr 28, 2022
The Learning Lunch - Leadership lessons from the Arch
*The late Archbishop Desmond Tutu, or the Arch as he is fondly referred to, once said on hope: “Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness” and on being a wise leader: “Wisdom is when you are able to use your experience for not repeating the mistakes that you have made or others have made. Wisdom is being able to affirm others and knowing that you are not a one-man band. Wisdom is recognising that others are wiser than you.”
*Amidst trials both past and present for civil society, and with the Covid-19 pandemic amplifying these trials, this podcast seeks to reinstill hope. We focus on the wise leadership values of Archbishop Demond Tutu by speaking to those who worked closely with him in civil society. We examine how he handled moments of pressure and conflict from the opposition and within, and how he continued to be a beacon of light, mobilising groups and encouraging them forward even in the darkest moments in South African history.
In this po…
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Nov 26, 2021
The Learning Lunch - Keeping young people afloat
*Many NGOs work with children and young people – and mostly with children and young people that grow up in exceptionally difficult circumstances. Poverty and inequality often form the backdrop to a difficult and painful childhood marred by toxic environments of violence and abuse that leave children and young people traumatised. **Waves for Change** is an NPO with a very specific approach to dealing with trauma in children. Waves for Change share practical advice for all of us who might work with children or young people who are traumatised – whether that is the core focus of our work or not.
*Often our core work as an NPO is not necessarily to deal with the trauma of children, we might try to teach them reading, or we might provide school tutoring, but in the process, we discover how traumatised they are. We also may discover that, depending on the severity of their situation, we are often required to take specific action or at least to act in a very sensitive way, keeping in min…
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Nov 26, 2021
The Learning Lunch - Theory U: Create the future
*As civil society, we see ourselves as drivers of change. But, sometimes we can get so bogged down in the day-to-day humdrum of our work, that we lose our energy and drive to explore new terrain – to find new ways of doing things. We also sometimes lose sight of the inner progression that is happening in ourselves, and our role in manifesting the future.
*Developed by Otto Scharmer, Theory U is an approach to creating change based on a process of inner knowing and social innovation. Professor Scharmer says: “When you deal with managing change, the bulk of the job is moving people from a “silo view” to a “systems view” – or, as we would say, from an egosystem awareness to an eco-system awareness. In fact, what surprises me most is how reliably we can create conditions that allow for that kind of shift in awareness to happen. You can’t manufacture it. You can’t mould it like a piece of metal by hammering on it from the outside. But you can create a set of inner and out…
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Nov 26, 2021
The Learning Lunch - Harnessing Thunder
*Where lies our hope at the moment? The last two years have been challenging for civil society. The Covid-19 pandemic heightened the inequalities of South Africa and NPOs, as always, stepped in to offer a helping hand on the ground amidst a series of corruption reports and violent eruptions in KwaZulu-Natal. Individuals came together to do this while dealing with their own challenges within their organisations and their personal lives. To keep themselves going activists need to keep in touch with their vision for the wellbeing and prosperity of South Africans. However, in the context of South Africa at the moment, it feels as though the vision is becoming more and more out of reach.
*There has been an overwhelming sense of exhaustion this second year of the pandemic (2021), within civil society and within the general public. And while we have been trying to keep going, we have been dealing with feelings of disappointment with our government, guilt and pressure because we are not able…
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