Big Ideas Narrative - college.bishops.org.za

Big Ideas Narrative Kunceda – An NGO appraisal tool

Khelan Dheda, Jonathan Roche, Benjamin Jack, Daniel Nelson

11/19/18 Big Ideas

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Contents Abstract ..................................................................................................................................... 3

Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 4

The Big Problem: Poverty ................................................................................................... 5

Why do we care? .................................................................................................................6

What are the specific problems we addressed? .................................................................. 7

Why do we want to address these issues? ..........................................................................9

Who do these problems affect? ...........................................................................................9

Who did we want to help?................................................................................................. 10

Where did our project take place? .................................................................................... 10

What SDGs are related to our project? ............................................................................. 11

The Narrative Roadmap .................................................................................................... 12

Background Research .............................................................................................................. 13

The Dynamics of Poverty in South Africa .......................................................................... 16

Our Story ................................................................................................................................. 24

The First Idea ....................................................................................................................... 24

The Second Idea .................................................................................................................. 25

The Third Idea ..................................................................................................................... 26

The Fourth Idea ................................................................................................................... 27

Laura Bergh Interview ......................................................................................................... 28

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Analysis of Laura Bergh interview ....................................................................................... 31

Our story towards the end of the course ............................................................................ 32

The Tool .................................................................................................................................. 34

Results ..................................................................................................................................... 37

Conclusion ............................................................................................................................... 44

Recommendations moving forward .................................................................................. 45

Appendices ..............................................................................................................................48

Additional Interviews and Recommendations ...................................................................48

An email of recommendations (Free of TB) ..................................................................... 60

Another email of recommendations (from I See U) ......................................................... 61

Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................. 63

References ...............................................................................................................................64

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Abstract Poverty is rampant in South Africa with nearly 55% of the population falling under the

poverty line. There are currently ~150 000 NGOs (non-governmental organisations) in

South Africa, which are non-profit entities that seek to achieve some social benefit. A

substantial proportion of NGOs work on poverty alleviation. However, there is no

comprehensive multi-dimensional tool to assess the effectiveness of these NGOs. This is

important because NGOs need to ensure that they are making maximal poverty-

alleviation impact (lack of an empirical tool makes this difficult), and philanthropists and

government agencies need to be guided about targeted investment of resources to

maximise impact.

We (Kunceda) developed a multi-dimensional tool that integrates both quantitative and

qualitative parameters of poverty, measures impact of both monetary and social aspects,

and tells the NGO what they can do better to create impact and reduce poverty.

There are a few implications of our research. Firstly, this tool can act as a blueprint for

NGOs to follow to create impact and therefore be successful. Second, it can show NGOs

where they are going wrong so that impact can be maximized. Third, external investors

will be able to track the progress of NGOs. Once fully developed this tool will be a far

more accurate diagnostic tool than the singular parameters currently used to measure

impact.

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Introduction

We are Kunceda – the isiXhosa word for ‘helping hand’, or ‘to help’. We were inspired to

choose this name due to our interest in the alleviation of poverty in South Africa – caused

by the deep and entrenched inequalities that are systematic in our country, partly due to

the legacy of apartheid and the failure of post-democracy governments to adequately

address this, thereby leading to widespread prevalence of poverty (English, 2016). Kunceda

is made up of four students: Khelan Dheda, Daniel Nelson, Johnny Roche, and Benjamin

Jack (all in Grade 9 and 15 years old). We live in South Africa, one of the most unequal

countries in the world with a World Bank

reported Gini coefficient of 0.63 (Feketha,

2018) and over 55% of people living below

the poverty line as at 2015 (Omarjee, 2017).

From an early age, we noticed the problems

that result from this and we began to feel strongly about it in our very immediate

surroundings. We attend the Bishops Diocesan College – one of the most prestigious

schools in South Africa (News24, 2014). Yet not even 14km away (Google Maps, 2018), lies

the informal settlement/township of Gugulethu, where a substantive portion of residents

do not have access to piped water, flush toilets, or formal dwellings (City of Cape Town,

2011). That is merely an illustration of the inequality that both Cape Town and South Africa

is facing (Wilhelm, 2012). We have come from very different backgrounds and have starkly

differing stories in comparison to the stories and backgrounds of people who live in poverty,

When we began our project, we didn’t even begin

by learning statistics about poverty. What’s scary is

that, because we’ve grown up in such an

environment, we didn’t realise how horrific the

situation was. - Khelan

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and in fact most of the population; we find this unjust and is one of the reasons why we

want to help.

Our idea was implemented through the Big Ideas course (beginning in July 2018 and ending

in November 2018) at Bishops, designed to inspire students to seek change in the world

through the framework of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (Ramphele, 2018). We

chose the first goal: No Poverty, which the UN states more specifically as the aim to

eliminate extreme poverty by 2030 (UN, 2015). Over the past term we have been developing

our project, of which we will tell in two ways – firstly through our research, and secondly

through our story.

The Big Problem: Poverty

Poverty is one of the greatest challenges

facing the society of the future (UN, 2015).

According to the UN, 836 million people are

currently living in extreme poverty, which is defined as a household income of less than

$1.25 a day. (UN, 2015). 4.4 billion people (71% of the global population of 6.2 billion) live

under $10 a day (Kochhar, 2015). Millions of people are also condemned to impoverishment

and suffering across the world (UN, 2015) merely due to the lottery of birth, due to how

difficult it is to escape what is known as the cycle of poverty – what is termed officially as

chronic poverty (eSchoolToday, n.d.). Poverty deprives people of much of their human

dignity due to the limitation of their freedoms, such as the right to health, adequate housing,

food and safe water, and the right to education (Office of the United Nations High

When we began, we were incredibly productive,

and made rapid progress through our research. We

soon discovered however, that this doesn’t

necessarily continue, due to the innate dynamics of

research, as well as an ample dose of unmotivated

teenagers, procrastination, and memes. - Khelan

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Commissioner for Human Rights, 2010). We would arguably say that nothing else in the

world has a greater impact on the lives of so many millions of people (in terms of what

causes the most detriment) (Global Issues Network, n.d.). Poverty creates the most

vulnerable people in society, and the poor deal with a variety of issues within their lives that

are contributors to their socioeconomic status – issues such as low attainment of education,

unemployment, more difficulty in accessing services, in some cases lack of shelter, and

many other social issues (Employability in Scotland, n.d.).

Why do we care?

We care about poverty because of the sheer amount of pain and suffering it causes for

people who fall into it. We care about poverty because it impedes humanity from reaching

its full potential, and because it is such a massive problem. The statistics we mentioned

above alone should really tell you why we care, and we would be rather surprised if you

didn’t as well. Poverty condemns people to a ridiculously inferior life

standard, one that humans shouldn’t have to lead for the basic

argument of human dignity (Office of the United Nations High

Commissioner for Human Rights, 2010), and for people to face that

is simply just bad and shouldn’t happen in society. We have had such

a dramatic change in our knowledge and mindsets throughout the

Big Ideas course, and it’s become something that we deeply care

about due to the experiences we’ve had and the knowledge we’ve

gained about the grim realities of the world.

When we were at the stage of

discussing the reason we all

chose this topic (about the third

period we were in our group) it

dawned on us that luckily our

groups mind set was very similar

and aligned to each other, this

seemed to help us throughout

our time together. -Ben

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What are the specific problems we addressed?

Poverty is very obviously a massive problem, leading to it being the priority of our

government (SABC, 2017). But there are a vast number of citizens outside the government

who want to contribute to the fight against poverty as well. To do so, they form what is

known as an NGO (Non-Governmental Organisation). As of 2017, there are nearly 150 000

NGOs working within South Africa (Bergh, 2018), of which a substantial portion work with

the poor of South Africa (Bergh, 2018). There are a few problems that exist currently in this

specific area of solving poverty.

Firstly, the measures that we currently use to measure NGO performance, such as merely

measuring monetary gain before NGO contact and after NGO contact, or simply focusing

on the efficiency of the NGO (Abo Ramadan & Borgonovi, 2015), ignore complexity and the

reality behind what makes an NGO good – impact (Bergh, 2018) (Ravera, 2018). This results

in a flawed understanding of what a good NGO is, a flawed perception of which NGOs are

working, and which are not, and therefore do not perform as an effective diagnostic tool to

understand the progress and impact of the NGO.

Secondly, some of the tools that we currently use ignore the complexity and

multidimensionality of poverty (this is more of a subpoint). Many tools attempt to measure

impact as a metric to measure NGO effectiveness (Abo Ramadan & Borgonovi, 2015), and

some do not at all (Sawhill & Williamson, 2001). Firstly, what many of them fail to do is

realise that there are multiple ways of measuring impact, and secondly, that poverty is

multi-dimensional, and so there needs to be criteria that look at collaboration with other

NGOs, and long term effectiveness, which some do, but many fail to (Abo Ramadan &

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Borgonovi, 2015). On the point of realising that there are multiple ways of measuring impact

– many tools resort to measuring one thing, such as monetary impact, or social impact

(Bergh, 2018). But none combine these metrics together, realising that both are important

(Bergh, 2018), and this is one of the novelties of our project. It is partly an extension of the

idea of the double bottom line from business and transplanting it into NGOs. On the point

of realising that poverty is multidimensional – this means that poverty has many facets or

aspects. For example, poverty isn’t just about lack of assets, but also more difficulty in

accessing services, inequality, nutrition, education, and so forth. This is where the

interconnectedness to the other UN Sustainable Goals comes into play and is discussed

further on Page 10. (Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative, n.d.). For example,

you will not solve poverty by running a soup kitchen on its own. No matter if you can feed

the whole of Cape Town for free, if the NGO does not collaborate with another NGO to say,

help these people get jobs, then they won’t get far in becoming self-sufficient and lifting

themselves out of poverty and dependency. This severely diminishes their potential impact,

and our tool takes this into account. In summary, many tools do a poor job of measuring

impact, and they too often focus on efficiency of the NGO (Abo Ramadan & Borgonovi, 2015).

Third, most tools do not accompany a framework that can assess where the NGO is going

wrong in terms of the impact they are creating and what they can do to improve it (Abo

Ramadan & Borgonovi, 2015). As a result, there is no measurable questionnaire that we know

of in this crucial area that NGOs need to have in order to assess how they can be more

impactful.

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Why do we want to address these issues?

We want to address these issues because it is clear, that there is a need for a comprehensive

benchmark that addresses the shortcomings of current tools to measure NGOs as stated

earlier. If these NGOs that work in poverty do not have an appropriate metric to measure

and quantify what they are doing, then they will not be able to understand whether they

are doing a good job or not, and where they are going wrong, which is leading to a loss of

productivity. This lost productivity could have a profound impact on the poor and is

basically the loss of an opportunity to alleviate poverty. There is also very little research that

has been done in this area, and so this is an opportunity for us to try to innovate and come

up with something new. So, in summary, we have chosen this project as it is a pressing

problem and an unmet need (that has societal consequences), and hardly any research has

been done in this area

Who do these problems affect?

Thus, in summary there are no comprehensive tools to measure the effectiveness of NGOs

in terms of the complexity and multi-dimensional aspects of poverty. Such a tool would be

useful to donors and governmental agencies to target their investments and resources thus

maximising social impact. NGOs themselves could use such a tool to monitor their impact

and progress, and thus change their modus operandi to maximise societal impact. If the

NGOs are not working optimally (either due to ignorance about their contextual and

hierarchical efficiency or what components they need to focus on to work efficiently), then

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the people who are negatively affected are those the NGO is trying to help (as they could

have a better service). Second, individuals who wish to donate to an NGO are not having

their donation make the most impact. And finally, the people who run NGOs whose actions

are not having the most impact as they could possibly, which is frustrating.

Who did we want to help?

When we began this project, despite not knowing what precisely we wanted to do, we did

have one goal in mind. That is whatever we did would help in the efforts to eradicate

poverty, and that at least we would help people who are in poverty in whatever way we

could. Our entire project is geared towards helping people in poverty, and we do hope

that our tool does help in the fight against poverty. These are the people we wanted to

help.

Where did our project take place?

Our project therefore takes place in areas which are poverty stricken – the deprived areas

of Cape Town and South Africa. Even though we

developed our tool, researched, and conducted

interviews, mostly within the confines of our school

and our homes, where our tool will be useful is going

to be in these poverty-stricken areas, and that is really

where our project is taking place.

Jonny – In our first lessons we went straight

into ideas, but we didn’t investigate the

complexity of poverty and how big the

problem is. Which is why I think our first

few ideas failed.


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What SDGs are related to our project?

The UN Sustainable Goals related to poverty are numerous. Poverty is what is known as a

multidimensional problem – it straddles an interdisciplinary area and is complex (it falls

under the realm of systems thinking and complexity theory). This is why the field of poverty

stretches into subjects such as:

• Goal 2 (zero hunger – one aspect of poverty is malnutrition (UNDP, n.d.)),

• Goal 3 (healthy living – the poor also tend to lack access to health facilities, and often

don’t have access to basic medical care such as vaccinations, and many die from

preventable diseases (UNDP, n.d.)),

• Goal 4 (quality education (UNDP, n.d.)),

• Goal 5 (gender equality – women tend to take on more of the brunt of poverty, and

there are several gender related aspects to it (UNDP, n.d.)),

• Goal 6 (sanitation – many of the poor lack access to basic health and sanitation

(UNDP, n.d.)),

• Goal 7 (affordable and clean energy – a portion of the poor do not have access to a

reliable electricity supply (UNDP, n.d.)),

• Goal 8 (economic growth – lack of equity in economic growth is a partial cause of

poverty (UNDP, n.d.)),

• Goal 10 (inequality – this is the other partial cause of poverty (UNDP, n.d.)), Goal 11

(sustainable communities – extreme poverty is often concentrated in urban areas

(UNDP, 2018)), and

• Goal 16 (peace, justice, and strong institutions – the poor are affected by bad

governance due to corruption, and many of their human rights are often degraded

(UNDP, n.d.)).


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The Narrative Roadmap

Throughout the rest of this narrative, we will discuss a few things. Firstly, we will begin

with a section on the background research we did into poverty, and what we learnt from it.

This includes what we learnt from reading

research reports, newspaper articles,

conducting interviews, and ‘sitting in the

cloud’ (jumping from one idea to another

due to either disinterest or failure in the

research process). Then, we will outline

the tool we built, give an example of it in

use, and explain why we chose the metrics

we did. We’ll then conclude and offer some

suggestions for this project going forward.

During all of this, we will narrate our

personal journeys through the research

process and the Big Ideas course, using

reflective boxes (the blue boxes you will see fixed within the text) to tell our story.

This is where our project and our ideas on solving our

problem were thought up scratched and done again in

this paper we will show you how and what we did.

It took us a couple of tries, but through our trial and error

and the constant nagging in our heads that our goal is

nearly impossible, we set out to do what we think could

benefit as much as possible. Our ideas came and went

and so did the days and eventually we arrived at our

destination. This is where we began our journey and

despite doing all the reading and brain storming we

could, we not wrap our brains around what we were

doing. -Ben


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Background Research

As you drive down the motorway towards the Southern Suburbs from Cape Town

International Airport, you may see what is known as a township or informal settlement on

the side of the road. Informal settlements and townships are where poverty is most often

found. We refer to townships here as any geographical area or settlement that is

overwhelmingly poor (Figure 1). (Wikipedia, 2018).

Figure 1. A picture of Crossroads, the township or informal settlement next to Cape

Town International Airport.

For many foreigners who are from developed countries, this sometimes seems like a shock

or surprise, due to the absence of such places or presence of extreme poverty in their home

countries. Within these townships or informal settlements, you will see a few things. Firstly,

some areas within the township or informal settlement (no matter how decrepit it looks


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initially), may be falling under what is known as extreme poverty (City of Cape Town,

2011)(where a household has a combined income of less than $1.90 a day) (UN, 2015)

(Wikipedia, 2018), but some may be richer (City of Cape Town, 2011)(what is known as

relative poverty – poverty relative to the quality of life surrounding it) (Wikipedia, 2018).

(Wikipedia, 2018). Within these townships or informal settlements, we can assume one

thing however -the vast majority of the inhabitants are poor – defined as having a household

income of less than R992 per person per month (World Bank, Statistics SA, 2017)(page xii).

To illustrate it in a different way, that’s equivalent to about R32 each day. As of 2017, nearly

55% of the South African population satisfy these criteria, which equates to around 33

million people in South Africa (Omarjee, 2017). To contextualise, R32 can afford you a R15

taxi fare into the City and back, or a loaf of white bread and milk, or a cappuccino and a

bottle of water. (Numbeo, 2018). It is clear from this illustration that the amount is so

meagre that having a fair standard of life is an impossibility (thus, the thresholds of the

definitions themselves makes one wonder!).

The second thing to note is that there is a high proportion of people who are unemployed.

As of the Third Quarter of 2017, South Africa has a 27.7% unemployment rate, and the youth

unemployment rate is 38.6% (World Bank, Statistics SA, 2017)(page xi). This is very

obviously one of the impediments to the growth of South Africa’s economy. Taking an

example of Gugulethu, a township or informal settlement in Cape Town, the unemployment

rate for 15-64-year olds was 60% in 2011 (City of Cape Town, 2011)(page 2). The third thing

to note is that infrastructure and services in these townships or informal settlements are

incredibly poor. Most people do not have formal housing, and instead live in tin shacks or

informal housing (Hamann, et al., 2018) (Hamann, et al., 2018). Access to services are limited


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and are often of inferior quality. For example, many do not have access to piped water,

toilets, electricity, or transportation (Habitat for Humanity, n.d.). Due to a lack of sanitation,

diseases such as TB are rife in townships or informal settlements (Clavarino, 2015), and

childhood mortality is high due to diseases which are preventable (Sartorius, et al., 2011)

The first question we asked ourselves when we began our project was attempting to define

poverty. This is a rather subjective question and has numerous answers. What we settled

on, and what was confirmed by our sources (UNESCO, n.d.), was that poverty was

effectively a lack of resources (money or material possessions), which was caused by a lack

of opportunity (UNESCO, n.d.). We would like to propose an argument, which is both

sound and backed by empirical evidence.

Here is an illustration of what life is like as a poor South African:

It is more likely that you will be born into a rural setting, however, there are large swathes

of concentrated packets of urban poverty in cities as well (Wikipedia, 2018). As a result, you

will be subjected to the ‘poverty tax’ that accompanies childhood growing up in poverty -

negative conditions such as substandard housing, homelessness, inadequate nutrition and

food insecurity, inadequate child care, lack of access to health care, unsafe neighbourhoods,

and under resourced schools which adversely impact children. Poorer children and teens

are also at greater risk for several negative outcomes such as poor academic achievement,

school dropout, abuse and neglect, behavioural and socioemotional problems, physical

health problems, and developmental delays (American Psychological Association, n.d.).

When you are born, there is a greater chance of succumbing to infant mortality, (Zewdie,

2014, p. iv). This is the story of childhood in poverty and leads to the situation we have today.

Because of a lack of education or skills, it leads to unemployment, which is the main driver


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of poverty (World Bank, Statistics SA, 2017). This is a rough outline of what the cycle of

poverty entails.

If you compare this life to that of a child who was lucky enough to be born into a wealthy

family, the comparison is astoundingly different. You can see from the exemplar and the

empirical research that social mobility is quite restrictive (World Bank, Statistics SA, 2017).

The system dooms these children (much of the population) to failure (World Bank,

Statistics SA, 2017) because of this low social mobility.

We don’t think it’s necessary to bombard you with statistics and stories about how bad

poverty is – most of you who are reading this already know that the current situation that

we have is atrocious and unsustainable. The sheer extent of poverty in South Africa is

evident to anyone who does not live under a rock, and therefore, we shall now direct your

attention as to why and how poverty happens, and possible ways to solve it.

The Dynamics of Poverty in South Africa

The legacies of apartheid still linger on. Nearly two decades after the dawn of democracy in

South Africa, poverty remains a stubborn issue (Omarjee, 2017). Despite the efforts of the

national government to reduce poverty through schemes such as grants (which have been

partially successful) (World Bank, Statistics SA, 2017), poverty still remains at the beck and

call of structural inequalities that were entrenched and created by the apartheid regime.

(Bergh, 2018) (National Planning Commission, 2014)


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In terms of gender, 51.2% of all females in South Africa are poor, in comparison to 31,4% of

males in 2015 (World Bank, Statistics SA, 2017). By race, the burden of poverty is carried

mostly by Black South Africans, the very group that the apartheid regime sought to

disenfranchise (World Bank, Statistics SA, 2017). Nearly 43% of all Black South Africans live

below the poverty line, with 23% Coloured South Africans meeting this threshold (World

Bank, Statistics SA, 2017). Poverty rates are miniscule for Indian and White South Africans,

with around 1% for each (World Bank, Statistics SA, 2017). By education, nearly 80% of those

who had not completed any form of education were classified as poor (World Bank,

Statistics SA, 2017). Nearly half of people who had completed only primary education were

below the poverty line, in comparison with 40% who had education up to Grade 9, and 10%

of those who had completed Matric (World Bank, Statistics SA, 2017). Virtually no one who

had completed tertiary education were living under the poverty line. (World Bank, Statistics

SA, 2017)

46.3% of all economically inactive people were below the poverty line, in comparison to

only 20.5% of economically active people. This shows that economic activity matters greatly

in reducing poverty. (World Bank, Statistics SA, 2017)

Poverty tends to impact the youth the hardest, with 50.5% of all children living under the

poverty line. Poverty tends to increase with the more children that a household has, and the

greater the size of the household, the greater the chance of poverty. (World Bank, Statistics

SA, 2017)

What is interesting here is that you can use these factors to accurately estimate the

likelihood of poverty. Poverty can therefore be predicted fairly accurately using gender, race,

education, location, economic activity, age, and household. If you are Black, female, have


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no education, economically inactive, and living in a large household with lots of children,

you are far more likely to be in poverty than a single white male who has completed tertiary

education and is economically active. (World Bank, Statistics SA, 2017)

Even though there is massive concentration of poverty in urban areas, poverty is more

prevalent in rural areas, with nearly 60% of all people living under the poverty line living in

rural areas (World Bank, Statistics SA, 2017). The provinces of the Eastern Cape, Limpopo,

and Kwa-Zulu Natal sharing the highest burdens of poverty, with KZN alone housing nearly

a quarter of the poor (World Bank, Statistics SA, 2017). Spatially, poverty is found in pockets

– within an entire region, or within a single municipality (World Bank, Statistics SA, 2017).

This is because during the apartheid regime, poverty was created using spatial zoning laws

(it is also important to note that much of the chaos that we have today regarding poverty is

rooted within the structural inequalities created by the apartheid regime – and that these

structural inequalities are present in practically every single aspect of life), in which

designated ‘black’ areas were deprived of basic services and economic activity (Bergh, 2018).

These areas were specifically chosen by the apartheid government to maximally

disadvantage the residents, and often planned cities around this notion of attempting to

disadvantage the residents of these areas. It is in these areas in which we find poverty today.

Many townships or informal settlements reflect this history, and it is unfortunate that

things have not changed much since apartheid (National Planning Commission, 2014).

Food insecurity and malnutrition is still rife in South Africa (Wikipedia, 2018). In the year

2000, nearly 39% of the country suffered from malnutrition (Wikipedia, 2018). It is directly

correlated with poverty, which in turn is correlated with race, gender, economic security,

location et cetera, and has a spatial dimension (World Bank, Statistics SA, 2017).


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Interestingly, subsistence agriculture is effective in increasing food security, which suggests

that interventions such as urban farming may prove to be effective in easing this aspect of

poverty (Baipethi & Jacobs, 2009). Most South Africans lack a varied diet, and this

contributes to numerous health issues such as heart disease and diabetes, which is most

prevalent in the poor population (Wikipedia, 2018)

In rural areas, schools are often far away, and even when schools are in close reach, many

of them are of extremely sub-standard quality (Carelse, 2018). There are obviously some

schools that buck the trend, but these are few and far in between. This results in most

children born into poverty either dropping out before matric or failing it (or achieving a

meagre pass) (Seeth, 2017). Very few enter tertiary education (Seeth, 2017). As we showed

earlier, education is one of the determining factors that influence poverty, and if the public

education system (which is meant to uplift the nation) is in such a state of dysfunction, then

our future in eradicating poverty looks bleak. Even in urban areas, the state of the public

education system is disgraceful. (Morris, 2018)

As stated before poverty is multidimensional. Not only is it a lack of resources in monetary

terms, but factors such as education, health and sanitation, shelter, and food security also

play large roles in poverty. Therefore, we say that poverty is multidimensional – it has many

facets and dimensions (Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative, n.d.). We

cannot solve poverty by simply handing out large amounts of money to people – we must

address the above-mentioned factors if we want to progress (this is one of the reasons why

handouts don’t tend to solve the root issue – they don’t solve any of the causal factors nor

encourage self-sufficiency. Even though they are incredibly good and useful [for example,


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by preventing people from starving], it nevertheless does not sustainably solve the problem

of why people are starving in the first place). (Bergh, 2018)

What is interesting is that access to services are in direct proportion to income. It holds

logically (and has been demonstrated in countries such as South Korea and China – we’ll

talk about the research we did into these countries later on) that if the poor have access to

services in the same capacity as the rich, then much of poverty could be solved (as poverty

is mostly not a choice – it is lack of opportunity (Bergh, 2018)). Provide a poor child with a

quality education (along with satisfying the supporting factors required such as a stable

home and food security), and there is an exponentially higher chance that they would attend

university or some other technical education, thereby leading to employment and

alleviation of poverty (Bergh, 2018). Their prospects to become a productive citizen become

very realistic, in comparison to being doomed to the cycle of poverty (Bergh, 2018). This is

a viable way we could solve poverty. If we reduce inequality by ensuring that every citizen

has access to quality services and can lead a decent quality of life (by creating employment

and improving service delivery), we have a realistic shot at reducing poverty in South Africa

(Bergh, 2018).

Despite the South African government having a notorious reputation for being inept

(Moeng, 2018), there has been some notable progress in reducing multidimensional poverty

over the past few decades. Apartheid led to massive inequality and deprivation of access to

services and resources, and the government has made progress in remedying this.

The reach of basic services has widened largely – access to water is now at 93% (2015) in

comparison to 83% in 1994, 87% in comparison to 63% for access to electricity, 66% from

53% in terms of access to sanitation. Even though we are outperforming our peers in Sub-


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Saharan Africa, we still lag behind many comparable countries of our stature in these

metrics. (National Planning Commission, 2014)

Nearly a million people have been lifted out of poverty due to these efforts, but the current

situation is still grim. This is because even though the government on paper has wonderful

initiatives, they are badly implemented and thus do not have as much impact as they should

have. (Bergh, 2018)

Now that we know the drivers of poverty, it is obvious on how to solve South African poverty

– solve the drivers. Therefore, what should be our priority in combatting poverty is creating

jobs for the masses and focusing on improving our education system such that everyone

receives a decent matric education and can progress to some form of tertiary hopefully. This

is easier said than done.

The South African Multidimensional Poverty Index (Stats SA) measures each poverty-

related factor and gives it a weighting in an overall index (this was derived by performing a

multivariable analysis outlining factors strongly associated with poverty and hierarchically

weighting these factors based on the strength of the association). The Multidimensional

Poverty Index allowed us then to derive a tool to measure the impact of NGOs in solving

poverty (see Figure 2). (World Bank, Statistics SA, 2017)


22

Figure 2.1, showing the indicators that underlie and predict poverty in South Africa

Figure 2.2, Showing the composition of the South African Multidimensional Poverty

Index, which is used to measure multidimensional poverty.

As you can see here, you can see that being unemployed is the largest factor in determining

whether you land up in poverty or not. This is the conclusion we came to through reasoning,


23

and through one of our interviews (with Laura Bergh, Chief Enabler at Poverty Stoplight).

We reasoned that poverty could be solved by creating economic growth through jobs – and

it is the lack thereof that is causing our monstrous poverty rate.

We then reasoned this: how do we create jobs? This is the million-dollar question that we

see all the time in the newspapers and on television, but what exactly creates jobs? From

here, we thought companies (obviously). Why do they hire people? They are exchanging

money for services (which is contained within the worker’s skill set). And the companies

themselves exchange money for the product they create to satisfy demand. We thought a

few things here. We need to ensure that we encourage entrepreneurship and self-

employment (as done so spectacularly by Grameen Bank) or convince more companies to

invest in South Africa (whilst simultaneously training workers). These were the questions

we asked right at the beginning of our project and led us down the route of our first few

ideas.


24

Our Story

The First Idea

We thought that if we wanted to create economic growth from a broken economy, we

should look towards other countries first to see how they managed to do it. China, South

Korea, Germany, and India were the few countries we looked at. China’s turnaround came

after a civil war/revolution, with the establishment of communism. Since we didn't see

ourselves staging a communist revolution in our

society any time soon we decided that this wouldn't

be a viable idea. Jokes and memes aside, China’s

economic growth began after liberalization and

introduction of capitalism during the rule of Deng

Xiaoping (Bannerjee & Duflo, 2011). China invested

massively into their agricultural and manufacturing

capabilities, as well as their education (Bannerjee &

Duflo, 2011). They also invested massive amounts of

m0ney into public services and guaranteeing that poor families still have a ‘basic standard’

of living, and that they have access to quality services (Guobao, 2016). A combination of

providing jobs and services, as well as their massive population, allowed China to catapult

itself into being one of the world’s largest economies (Bannerjee & Duflo, 2011). South

During our first session, we bounced off ideas

on what poverty was and how to possibly solve

it. Retrospectively, I think we were quite naïve.

During the first week we had brainstormed

and researched a whole host of ideas, but

because we eventually realised that we knew

next to nothing, we decided to organise

interviews with NGOs to understand what was

going on. – Khelan.


25

Africa’s first way to emulate them would be to

invest in education. Unfortunately, despite

South Africa spending nearly R350bn a year on

education (about 21% of its budget), with

R230bn on basic education, and a meagre

R10.7bn on technical training, with the rest

going into grants and scholarships (Treasury,

2018). Somehow, despite all the money we are

throwing at it, South Africa’s basic education

system ranks 134th out of 138 countries according to the World Economic Forum

(SOLESouthAfrica, 2017). So, there is clearly something wrong with our implementation.

This is one, possible way of solving poverty – figuring out why our education system is failing.

The Second Idea

Our second idea revolved around doing something in the field of technical education. This

followed our earlier stream of thought about trying to find a way to plug the skills gap. The

reason why South Africa has such a large income inequality is due to the large disparity in

We didn’t necessarily progress from these ideas in a linear fashion – it was all over

the place and all occurring simultaneously, which is why some of our ideas end

rather abruptly. – Khelan

We often didn’t really follow through with

implementation – we were kind of all over

the place and didn’t really know what we

were doing. This was our main idea at the

time, and we were planning to get in touch

with NGOs who work in this area of igniting

entrepreneurship, as well as an economist,

and poor people. This idea led onto our next

one. – Khelan


26

skills – the labour market in South Africa is split between mostly low-skilled workers who

get paid a pittance, and high skilled professionals earning large salaries (who are effectively

the minority elite) (World Bank, Statistics SA, 2017). We reconsidered our idea after we

realised it wouldn’t be logistically feasible, given our timeframe and resources. We

investigated technical colleges in South Africa, and researched why they don’t have larger

numbers, or whether they are even effective at all. It turned out that technical colleges only

enrol 700 000 students – less than the 900 000 students currently enrolled in universities

(Kahn, 2017). There were further articles that we found that said that technical colleges had

a high dropout rate and have limited effectiveness outside the workplace due to lack of

support structures. (Ho & Keese, 2018). This was confirmed in our interview with Laura

Bergh.

The Third Idea

Our next idea was based on creating entrepreneurs/self-employed in the townships. We

reasoned that we don’t have to rely on companies creating jobs for people, instead people

can create their own. This was based on the works

of Grameen Bank (from the book A World of Three

Zeroes, by Mohamed Yunus) (Yunus, 2016), where

through their program Nobin Udyokta they

provided microfinance loans to poor people coupled

with entrepreneurial incubation. Our idea was

based on implementing something like this in South

Daniel and I really enjoyed this stage as it was

pretty much looking into things we were

curious and interested in – and especially

because the time deadline was so far away, we

found it quite cool. We did an enormous

amount of research though now that I look

back on it - Khelan


27

Africa. We thought about creating an app or booklet that provided entrepreneurial

education (a step-by-step guide) to opening their own business and running one.

We initially were very drawn to this idea. It seemed to encapsulate all that we wanted to

achieve in this project. It would get people out of poverty without them feeling like they

were being babied, while also not being heavily reliant on man power, something that we

lacked. All that we would have to do was heavy back round research into the problem and

its solutions. But almost immediately we saw holes in our plan.

People wouldn’t necessarily be able to use such an app to successfully launch a business, as

it would just be implemented in the void. There

would be a lack of support, and that is pretty much

against the very principle of trying to get people to

start their own businesses. What would be needed

was an incubation hub. Furthermore, many NGOs are

tackling this very issue, such as the Ackerman

Academy and the Bertha Centre (UCT, 2018). We also

had zero contacts in townships and questioned whether people would take it seriously.

The Fourth Idea

During this stage of the Big Ideas course, we were confused and demotivated. We realised

quickly that we were very out of our depth, and so we organised interviews with a few

organisations in this area so that we could get a better idea

of what we should do. Our first interview was with Laura

Bergh, the Chief Enabler at Poverty Stoplight. This

Jonny- By this time we had gone through

multiple ideas and we were failing with all

ideas. I was worried whether we were going

to get an idea ready. We had multiple ideas,

and we were really confused and all over the

place

Jonny- the interview was very good, and it

was very insightful and helped us get to

where we are.


28

interview was unbelievably enlightening and really helped to push us forward. We spoke

about the issue with NGOs operating in South Africa and came across our current idea.

There is no framework to analyse the effectiveness of NGOs. We therefore selected this as

our project.

What we planned to do seemed quite simple – research what drives poverty in South Africa,

observe successful ways in how to solve it, and simply create a framework that evaluates

NGOs based on how well they fulfil these criteria. Our first aspect of the framework would

simply diagnose whether the NGO was effective or not. The second aspect would deal with

why the NGO was/wasn’t successful, through looking at the different aspects that make

successful NGOs and what makes effective poverty solving methods. Another aspect that

drew us to this project was that it is the closest thing we could get to improving the situation

without directly getting involved in government policy and considering that NGOs

command a large reach and supply of resources it would be an equally effective way to get

involved.

Our first step would ideally be to understand what poverty is, where it occurs, why it

happens, how to stop it, et cetera. Our second step would be to figure out what makes a

good NGO. And finally, we would combine these together to build a framework to evaluate

how successful an NGO has been. (Bergh, 2018)

Laura Bergh Interview

• What do you think is the most effective

way to solve the problem of poverty in

South Africa?

This interview with Laura was extremely

productive and really helped to get to where

we are now. She helped identify the

problems and where we where should focus

our attention - Jonny


29

• What exactly is poverty?

• Lack of assets

• Inequality

• Lack of resources

• How do you get the resources?

• Jobs

• Investment into skills and support and mentor this

• Kill the dependency culture and build self-sufficiency

• Why haven’t NGOs helped to solve the problem of poverty?

• There are nearly 150 000 NGOs in SA

• So if you are looking to start up another one, you are not going to get

very far.

• This is because they work in isolation and do not collaborate with

other NGOs, which doesn’t work if you are working on a complex

problem such as poverty.

• A possible idea is to try create some platform in order to make it easy

for NGOs to collaborate and communicate.

• But the thing is that NGOs compete for funding

• They are mostly entirely reliant on corporates.

• Who will solve the problem of poverty

• It requires partnerships for influence and resources

• Corporations on its own won’t help

• The government is inept, but because of its sheer size

and influence it is crucial in any solution

Unfortunately, due to a

technical issue, we failed to

actually physically record

our interview with Laura.

This was probably one of

the most frustrating things,

as we learnt so much in the

interview, but we didn’t

have a record. Straight

after we realised our error

we typed up a rough

summary of what

happened. This was a big

mistake we made. - Khelan


30

• Why does SA have so much of poverty?

• Poverty comes in different flavours all across the world. What is

poverty in one country, may not work in another.

• What we have in SA is structural inequality

• This permeates everything.

• From education, to transport, to access to resources.

• Apartheid.

• What we have to do is try to change this structural inequality and

access to resources. If we give everyone equal opportunity, our problem

will be solved.

• SA culture is bad.

• We need to create an entrepreneurial culture

• In order to change culture you need repeated touch points.

• This is why skills based courses over the course of 0 – 1 year

generally fail.

• Because there is no mentorship or support.

• If you speak to someone once about gender inequality, you’ll

make them think but you won’t change behaviour. If you want to

change behaviour you have to have repeated touch points.

• Poverty wounds people very badly

• People are suffering immense trauma

• Violence

• Lack of resources

• Dejection


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• Social issues

• Couple this with all the inequality and it is a recipe

for failure.

• So if you just give them skills, they go home and wonder.

Now what? You need mentorship and support.

• What makes an NGO successful?

• If you can identify this in SA, and create a framework, you can go

very far.

• Then you can really start to make progress with NGOs.

• Impact

• NGOs don’t have a proper measurement tool

Analysis of Laura Bergh interview

Laura really helped us to get on track with our idea we were unsure and not going anywhere.

We went into the interview with the

idea of setting up another NGO dealing with technical colleges, this was to get people work

skills and then they would be able to generate an income. We met with Laura and one of

the first things she said was to not set up another NGO because there were already a lot and

plenty of them, so our idea was stopped before it even started. We carried on discussing

various topics and these can be seen above in the outline of the interview, we then asked

her what the most beneficial thing or the topic would be which would make the greatest


32

impact and she said that there are so many NGOs without funding and that are isolated that

aren't make an impact because of this , so she said we should do a tool that evaluates NGO’s

and then determines if they are making an impact or not and if not why not and what they

could to fix this. Our interview with Laura really helped us to find our path into which we

were going to travel, and this led us to what we are doing now.

Our story towards the end of the course In the final weeks of the Big Ideas course we, as a group, were all over the place. Khelan,

who acted as a driver for the team, had to go to a public speaking competition which lasted

1 week. But since the contest was in Toronto he was gone for 2 weeks. This meant that as a

team we weren’t very motivated, and we didn’t get a lot of work done in those two weeks.

We managed to finish our Narrative draft just in time to be assessed. Our coach, Mr.

Henchie was very supportive of our draft the only thing he said we could work on was the

actual brainchild of our project, the tool.

Once Khelan got back he immediately tried to whip us into shape. This would prove to be

harder than one would think but we are teenagers who are prone to procrastination and

who had been lulled into a false sense of security after the praise for our first draft. He

eventually carolled us into working again once he made it quite clear that we weren’t even

halfway done by his standards. While Khelan worked on sprucing the document,

referencing, and adding content, Daniel began working on the conclusion to wrap up what

has been an eventful and unforgettable time of our lives. Ben helped get the website back

up, helped with formatting, and wrote up interviews, and Johnny helped with the website,

checking through the rubric, and polishing up.


33

After figuring out what goal we wanted to do it took us awhile to come up with any

substantial ideas but doing interviews really helped us chose what we wanted to do. We

figured that there were already so many NGOs in South Africa, around 100 000 at the last

count that a group of 4 boys who only had 6 months to come up with something and

implement it wouldn’t really make a dent in the fight against poverty. So, what else could

we do?

After our interview with Laura Bergh we decided to design a tool that assesses the

effectiveness of NGOs and tells them were they can improve. We then went and interviewed

Rowan Ravera at U-turn, one of the most successful NGOs in South Africa, to ask her what

makes a successful NGO and what U-turn does that is different to other NGOs. She was very

clear that impact is what NGOs should aim for – and this is the same mantra repeated by

Laura Bergh. We also sent the tool to three other NGOs, Learning in Reach, ISeeU and Free

of Tuberculosis to complete.

Our tool was then designed to measure these factors

in NGOs and to predict whether the NGO would be

successful or not. But as we neared the end of the term,

and the project due date, the quarrels that had

plagued our group at the start of the course reared

their heads again. We couldn’t agree on anything from

the formatting to who would proof read our final copy

of the Narrative. Luckily, a talk with Mr. Henchie

cleared things up for us and we were soon working

together with a common goal in mind… the alleviation of poverty.

The tool proved to be the

hardest part of our project, to

make it as accurate and good

as possible, we had to do a lot

of brainstorming and research

so we could create an effective

tool and make sure that it’s

actually useful by interviewing

NGOs- Daniel.


34

The Tool

The tool that we developed is based on empirical studies done to determine the causes of

poverty, research done into what makes a successful NGO, and what is the best way to bring

individuals out of poverty based on the identified drivers. What we are looking for here is

impact. How impactful are the actions of the NGO in the lives of the people of whom they

are helping is essentially the question we are asking. We have built a website that contains

the tool: https://sdggoal1.blogspot.com/p/collate.html.

1. How effective is the NGO?

a. Does the non-profit have a documented theory of change and set of

objectives? Are the objectives aligned with the SDGs? Do they have clear

evidence that they meeting their objectives? (Out of 10 – 10 being meeting

all objectives brilliantly, 9 being amazing, 8 being good, 7 being decent, 6

being average, etc.).

b. What evidence is there that the people served by the NGO are in a better

position/state, through engaging with the NGO, than they were when they

started the programme? Is there evidence from the ground? (Out of 10).

c. How much of an impact does the actions of the NGO have on the lives of

the individuals? (10 being absolutely life changing, 9 being an incredibly

large amount, 8 means that they will be sorely missed if gone, 7 means that

they are good, but not incredible, 6 is average, 5 is eh, et cetera).


35

2. Why is the NGO successful/unsuccessful?

a. What does the NGO deal with? (a higher weighting should be given to NGOs

who deal with a greater causal factor of poverty).

b. Does the NGO collaborate in order to deal with the multidimensionality of

poverty? (This factor is incredibly crucial).

i. Do they collaborate to help the same people?

(It is pointless to have an NGO that is for example, a food kitchen for

children, and does not collaborate with other NGOs to make sure that

the children can read for example, or have a safe home, et cetera. This

is the only way that NGOs can ever have a tangible impact on

decreasing poverty as a whole).

c. Does the NGO have a suitable monitoring and evaluation system (with

suitable metrics) that can empirically determine the success or failure of

their program?

i. Are the indicators designed for both qualitative and quantitative

data?

ii. Does the NGO follow up with their graduates/past beneficiaries?

iii. Does the NGO meet its goals and objectives?

d. Is the NGO efficient?

i. Are resources used to their maximal advantage (look for innovative

ways).

ii. Has the non-profit tried to provide evidence of performance and

impact that is unbiased, independent and clear?


36

iii. How much money is spent on direct contact and engagement with

the people vs on internal operations?

iv. Are the graduates of the NGO self-sufficient?

(This is the main criteria in taking people out of poverty. If

they are self-employed, entrepreneurs, or employed, they can

provide for themselves and their family, thereby lifting them

out of poverty. If an NGO is not working to achieve this, they

are merely plugging the gap and not fixing the proverbial

source of the leak itself).

v. Does the economic programme have a mentoring component that

assists people for at least 12 months after the main coaching has been

completed?

vi. Does the NGO encourage self-sufficiency – i.e. is it helping

individuals to help themselves?

e. Is the non-profit contributing to society in a meaningful way? Would it be

missed if it didn’t exist? By whom?

f. Does the NGO also put the individuals through personal development,

mental health development, and more ‘soft’ skills?

g. Does the non-profit collaborate with other orgs in partnerships or to deliver

parts of programmes?

This tool is simply the result of our background research into what causes poverty, and what

models successful NGOs and countries have used in defeating poverty.


37

Results

Unfortunately, due to time and resource constraints, we only managed to interview one

NGO face-to-face and had three other NGOs complete the tool independently. We did

however, compile a list of NGOs of which we knew were very effective (from Laura Bergh –

Clothing Bank in Thornton, Fix Forward in Muizenberg, and U-Turn in Claremont), and we

were planning to compare this to other randomly selected NGOs in order to see the

difference between a successful NGO and one that is less successful, and also to evaluate

our tool. This is one of the main failings of our project (even though our tool is based on

solid and reputable research done by major statistical and governing bodies).

If we plug the data that we received from U-turn into our model, we get the following:


a. What percentage of the individuals that enter the NGO exit with their

income above the poverty line? (Out of 10)

i. According to statistics collected by U-Turn, nearly 75% of all

individuals who U-Turn interacts with are lifted above the poverty

line. Therefore, U-Turn scores 7.5 here.

b. What is the percentage of individuals that enter the NGO exit with their

scores on the SAMPI down to 0? (Out of 10)

i. Again, this is 75% for U-turn, so they score 7.5

c. How much of an impact does the actions of the NGO have on the lives of the

individuals? (10 being absolutely life changing, 9 being an incredibly large


38

amount, 8 means that they will be sorely missed if gone, 7 means that they

are good, but not incredible, 6 is average, 5 is eh, et cetera)

The people that U-Turn help are former homeless people, who are unemployed, starving,

and many have addictions. A large majority of them come out of U-Turn fully reformed and

have a life. In fact, one is even doing a law degree! So, in terms of this, we would give U-

Turn a 10 as what they do is simply life-changing.

This gives U-Turn a score of 25 out of 30 (75%) on our scale.

Our aim was to establish a proof -of-concept, which should theoretically predict successful

NGOs from weaker ones because it is based on how well NGOs solve the drivers of poverty

– both income based and multidimensional. We fiddled around with the numbers and came

up with a scale to triage NGOs.

We found out that U-Turn is an exceptional NGO in comparison to many others – and this

merits their incredible score. This is due to the incredible and impactful work that it does –

and if you listen to the embedded interview, you’ll understand why they’re the dream of any

policy maker.

If we take an average NGO – say a soup kitchen. They would score little on the metrics of

actually improving income or lifting people out of poverty, but in terms of impact they

would have a 9 (they are the difference between people starving or not). We would probably

get a score of around 10 for the average NGO therefore, if not lower.


39

An NGO that scores above 9 for impact, and uplifts at least 15% of the people it interacts

with will get a score of roughly 12. We would argue that anything above this is rather good,

and anything above 17 is absolutely exceptional. A poor NGO would score below 7.

17+ Exceptional

12 – 17 Good

7 – 12 Average

0 – 7 Poor

This shows that U-Turn is a superior NGO, which we know as it has far more impact.

This is the 2nd question filled out from what we discovered with U-Turn.


a. What does the NGO deal with? (a higher weighting should be given to NGOs

who deal with a greater causal factor of poverty)

i. Rehabilitating homelessness with an emphasis on targeting all

multidimensional factors. U-Turn are already doing well.


poverty? (This factor is incredibly crucial)

i. Do they collaborate to help the same people? U-Turn collaborates

with several NGOs in order to tackle each multidimensional aspect

of poverty.

c. Does the NGO have a suitable tracking system (with suitable metrics) that

can empirically determine the success or failure of their program?

i. Does the NGO follow up with their graduates?


40

U-Turn does, and they do this over the long term to ensure that their

programs are successful.


i. Are resources used to their maximal advantage (look for innovative

ways).

1. U-Turn uses a variety of ingenious ways to maximise the

resources received to translate this into social impact.

ii. Does the NGO have an external and independent auditor that can

assess the efficiency of it?

1. U-Turn does have an external and independent auditor,

which also makes suggestions as to how to make it more

efficient.

iii. How much of money does it cost per person to successfully bring

them out of poverty?

1. Around several thousand rand, which is actually far more

cost-efficient than many other programs, and the cost of

leaving them on the street.

e. Are the graduates of the NGO self-sufficient?

i. Does the NGO have a ‘rehabilitation’ program?

1. Yes. Most graduates end up employed, successful, and self-

sufficient.

f. Does the NGO encourage self-sufficiency – i.e. is it helping individuals to

help themselves?


41

i. U-Turn is a brilliant example of how to do this.

We interviewed a further three NGOs. The transcripts are attached as Appendix 1. In

summary, all the NGOs interviewed have a set of objectives that are aligned with the SDGs.

In terms of impact, they ranged from 8 meaning they will be sorely missed if gone to 10

being absolutely life-changing.

The other interesting observation was that only 2 out of the 4 (50%) NGOs have a suitable

monitoring and evaluation system (with suitable metrics) that can empirically determine

the success or failure of their program.

We think our research does a brilliant job of both balancing the need to have a coherent

framework, but also not getting stuck in numbers and income – that’s not just the only way

you measure impact. It also really highlights what matters in an NGO, and what other NGOs

can do to maximise their impact. What is important to note is that this scale acts as a rough

guideline – it is not a hard and fast scale. I think the fact that our framework is a

questionnaire and a numerical scale takes the best of both aspects, and does not make it too


42

vague and soft, but not too strict and hard. This is the only way we can take into account

aspects of NGOs that are important but not numerically quantifiable.

Now that we have the tool, we can now critically look at any NGO, and analyse whether

they are being impactful or not, and why. This is currently lacking in the literature for

specifically South Africa poverty, but also globally, as far as we are aware, we are unique for

taking this sort of approach to be mindful of complexity and sustainability. This is one of

the reasons why our project I think was a success, because it took something that is not very

often looked at and created a novel tool to solve the problem. Why it works well is because

it takes into account all of what actually causes poverty, and what makes a successful NGO,

and combines it together to make a scale, and it takes into account the complexity involved

in the problem, which many tools do not (such as just measuring income before and after

contact with the NGO, which is unfortunately as common as it is fallacious (Bergh, 2018).

Therefore, our tool has the potential to be a lot more accurate than current methods of

assessment.

In greater context of the project, what does our tool actually achieve? Well, we have now

succinctly summarised the things that make an NGO good, and what ways are effective in

bringing people out of poverty.

Our tool will now help with a few things:

1. NGOs now can use this as a diagnostic tool.

2. Philanthropists can use this to see where their money will be most effective.

3. It will simply allow NGOs to become a lot better, and thereby have the greatest

impact they can on the poor.


43

It is therefore an incredibly powerful tool, especially considering how many do not know

these things. Our tool also makes it easier to learn about what makes a successful NGO

and what is the best way to bring people out of poverty, and it can then also be used

when governments participate with NGOs. There are numerous impactful ways to use

this tool as you can see, and this is why we think it’s valuable.


44

Conclusion

The problem that we sought to help solve was the immense problem of poverty in South

Africa. More specifically, we sought to bring NGOs to account with an easy, simple, tool

that would allow anyone, from philanthropists to NGOs themselves, to assess whether what

they are doing and whether they are making impact and progress on the problem or not.

We found out that creating a framework to deal with this was actually fairly easy if you knew

what a successful NGO should look like, and what goes into it. We found it quite surprising

that no one had created an improvement to the more ‘known’ but incomplete metrics such

as measuring solely income, nor analyzing the financial condition of such NGOs, or simply

not doing so at all. When we examined the problem, we found out that there are a few

common-sense principles that underlie NGO effectiveness, and that from there, you can

extrapolate it to create a way to assess it. Given what we knew after interviewing Laura

Bergh, and her communications with us over the period of time afterwards, as well as

Rowena from UTurn, we used design thinking to think about the problem – we put

ourselves in the shoes of people coming into an NGO, and the people who run the NGO

themselves, and reasoned from there using both our experiences and knowledge.

The issue of whether NGOs working in poverty are actually effective carries many

ramifications for the SDGs – as poverty is a multidimensional issue it encompasses so many

SDGs from hunger, to education, to economic growth, and in this way it is a rather broad

issue. NGOs are the only other main players in this arena besides the government, and due

to the large size and reach of these NGOs, they can have a big impact in the area of poverty

– provided that they are working effectively.


45

Although it seems awfully brash of us to approach such a complex problem and try to force

it into a quantifiable index, we took many pains into assuring that we took into account any

complexity involved. Initially when we started out project, we thought that all we needed

was to create employment, and this would be as easy as putting people on a course.

Retrospectively, we look like complete idiots for ignoring reality and not realizing that the

situation has a lot more factors than that. We addressed complexity in a few ways – firstly

by acknowledging systems thinking by focusing on the relationships between the person

the NGO is trying to help and their environment, secondly, by ensuring we used design

thinking (which meant we had to empathise and step into the shoes of the person the NGO

is trying to help and the NGO) so that our solution is more effective, and thirdly, by doing

a lot of research into trying to determine the reality of the situation, and finally, ensuring

that we adopt a sceptical, but empirical approach in whatever we tried. You cannot give a

broken person some technical training and assume that suddenly everything will be fine,

when you’ve ignored the effects of decades of hurt, deprivation, and suffering. The

complexity when building the tool was to figure out what we define NGOs by – results, or

impact? Furthermore, for the results, what metrics do you use? Will it be narrow, and ignore

the complexity of the situation, or will it fully consider the reality of the situation.

Recommendations moving forward

We would probably like to extend this project in a few ways. Firstly, we would like to create

some sort of scheme to make this a mainstream diagnostic tool to evaluate NGOs. This was

one of the ideas we considered in our PAR, and it would probably take the form of an app


46

or website, where NGOs can list on, and we could make it easy for NGOs to collaborate and

see what’s going on. It could also make the process of donating to NGOs easy – we could set

up something where you could choose to donate to an NGO every time you use your credit

card and wire it through the system. You could scroll through it, or browse categories, or

see what NGOs are operating in your area so you can get involved.

Second, we’d like to dramatically expand our data, so that we can do some systematic study

of the effectiveness of NGOs in South Africa, and where they are going wrong, so that we

can successfully make them work. Now that we have a suitable tool, we can now embark on

a large-scale study of NGOs in South Africa and see what comes out of that. We’re not sure

what will happen here, but we think it will be rather interesting.

Third, we’d want to refine our tool to make it better and more efficient in measuring impact,

and the associated factors to create that. This is an obvious one – expand the tool and make

it better as we go along. Who knows? Maybe we’ll stumble across a cool way to build the

index in a completely new and better way.

Fourth, we’d like to possibly expand this to other areas of the developing world, which often

have a lot less oversight, and need it more (so basically developing more tools to deal with

different ‘flavours’ of poverty). There’s very little research done on NGOs in other countries,

and even poverty, especially in poor countries in sub-Saharan Africa. This has the potential

to extend to NGOs in other countries as well.

Fifth, we would like to enter this into various science expos, and maybe even write an article

in a journal. This would be to publicise our tool, and this could be done in conjunction with

making our tool more innovative.

Sixth, making the tool open source, and possibly creating a platform for NGOs to

collaborate and help each other to improve their scores on the tool. There are many


47

possibilities, all of which we will consider, to make this project more impactful and do our

part to help resolve poverty.

This project has immense potential to be sustainable, due to

so many ways we can expand and advance it to make the

world a better place. It could change the way NGOs work

and has the possibility of greatly advancing the progress

NGOs are making today. It doesn’t require resources to run

– it merely requires people to adopt it.

After everything we have been through together

we as a group have really grown close together.

To see the project that we have shed blood,

sweat and tears over being implement will be

rewarding because it will be available for years to

come, could be improved or adapted, and maybe, just maybe it might one day get someone

out of poverty.

We are Kunceda and this is our story.

Daniel – After all that this group

has been through I have made

lifelong friends and these past few

months will be remembered

fondly.

Jonny – I really enjoyed working with my group

and I think having this group was the reason I

enjoyed Big Ideas as much as I did, because

everyone was determined, hardworking, and were

nice people to work with. Our group had extremely

good group dynamics throughout the course.

Ben – Big Ideas was really cool, and I

loved working on this project. My team

was amazing, and I think we did a great

job, and learnt some lessons along the

way

Khelan – This is easily one of my

highlights at Bishops so far. I enjoyed it

so much, it was incredibly intellectually

stimulating. I became a lot wiser in

many things, and I really enjoyed

working with our team!


48

Appendices

Additional Interviews and Recommendations

I See U



objectives? YES Are the objectives aligned with the SDGs? YES Do they have clear

evidence that they meeting their objectives? 8 (Out of 10).


position/state, through engaging with the NGO, than they were when they started the

programme? Is there evidence from the ground? 9 (Out of 10).


individuals? (10 being absolutely life changing, 9 being an incredibly large amount, 8

means that they will be sorely missed if gone, 7 means that they are good, but not

incredible, 6 is average, 5 is eh, et cetera). 10


a. What does the NGO deal with? (a higher weighting should be given to NGOs who

deal with a greater causal factor of poverty).

Education


poverty? (This factor is incredibly crucial). YES


49

i. Do they collaborate to help the same people? YES

ii. It is pointless to have an NGO that is for example, a food kitchen for children,

and does not collaborate with other NGOs to make sure that the children can read for

example, or have a safe home, et cetera. This is the only way that NGOs can ever have a

tangible impact on decreasing poverty as a whole.

c. Does the NGO have a suitable monitoring and evaluation system (with suitable

metrics) that can empirically determine the success or failure of their program?

In process of designing M&E system

i. Are the indicators designed for both qualitative and quantitative data?

YES, they will be

ii. Does the NGO follow up with their graduates/past beneficiaries?

YES, we intend to stay connected to first group of graduates


Largely (over past 4 years, out of 36 beneficiaries, we’ve had one drop-out and one

pregnancy)


i. Are resources used to their maximal advantage (look for innovative ways).

Always room for improvement

ii. Has the non-profit tried to provide evidence of performance and impact that is

unbiased, independent and clear?


50

Not yet - programme only just out of pilot phase

iii. How much money is spent on direct contact and engagement with the people vs

on internal operations?


The aim of our programme is to connect our graduates to post-school opportunities

(either further education or internships) after which they will have a better chance of

being employed.

This is the main criteria in taking people out of poverty. If they are self-employed,

entrepreneurs, or employed, they can provide for themselves and their family, thereby

lifting them out of poverty. If an NGO is not working to achieve this, they are merely

plugging the gap and not fixing the proverbial source of the leak itself.

v. Does the economic programme have a mentoring component that assists people

for at least 12 months after the main coaching has been completed?

Our programme is a 3-year mentoring programme

vi. Does the NGO encourage self-sufficiency – i.e. is it helping individuals to help

themselves?

Yes. The main emphasis of the programme is to encourage our mentees to be intentional

about planning for life after school.

e. Is the non-profit contributing to society in a meaningful way? Would it be missed

if it didn’t exist? Yes By whom?

The current beneficiaries of the programme and the other learners at the schools we work

in who aspire to be on the programme.


51

f. Does the NGO also put the individuals through personal development, mental

health development, and more ‘soft’ skills?

Yes, the programme emphasises self-awareness and the development of soft skills such as

communication skills, curiosity and decision-making skills

g. Does the non-profit collaborate with other orgs in partnerships or to deliver parts

of programmes?

Yes, collaboration is a core value of IseeU


52

Learning in Reach


a. Does the non-profit have a documented theory of change and set of objectives? Are the

objectives aligned with the SDGs? Do they have clear evidence that they meeting their

objectives? (Out of 10 - 10 being meeting objectives brilliantly, 9 being amazing, 8 being

good, 7 being decent, etc).

9. Learning in Reach have a documented theory of change and have short, medium and

long term goals. We have monitoring and evaluation tools including poverty stoplight and

annual ECD audit to track our progress. Our objectives are in line with a number of SDGs.

b. What evidence is there that the people served by the NGO are in a better position/state,

through engaging with the NGO, than they were when they started the programme? Is

there evidence from the ground? (Out of 10).

9. Yes




incredible, 6 is average, 5 is eh, et cetera).

9 but I would say the impact is whether the individuals are able to make the changes to

their own lives. It's through their actions that sustainable change to their lives happen.



53

a. What does the NGO deal with? (a higher weighting should be given to NGOs who deal

with a greater causal factor of poverty).

Learning in Reach are working with both the ECD centres and family unit to strengthen

the support for children under 6 years old. Research has shown this to be the most.

Important development phase with the ability to change the trajectory of a child's life.

b. Does the NGO collaborate in order to deal with the multidimensionality of poverty?

(This factor is incredibly crucial).


Yes, we work with a number of other NGOs to co-ordinate holistic support and build an

ECD ecosystem for better support and success.

ii. It is pointless to have an NGO that is for example, a food kitchen for children, and does

not collaborate with other NGOs to make sure that the children can read for example, or

have a safe home, et cetera. This is the only way that NGOs can ever have a tangible

impact on decreasing poverty as a whole.

I agree, in fact I think soup kitchens can be detrimental as they take the responsibility

away from children. We only support feeding within the schools and collaborate with

NGOs to assist parents to get jobs and earn sufficient income so that they can feed their

own families, restoring dignity and responsibility in the family.

c. Does the NGO have a suitable monitoring and evaluation system (with suitable metrics)

that can empirically determine the success or failure of their program?


54

We run poverty stoplight for families and run an ECD audit for ECD centres.

i. Are the indicators designed for both qualitative and quantitative data? Yes

ii. Does the NGO follow up with their graduates/past beneficiaries? Yes

iii. Does the NGO meet its goals and objectives? Not always because we do not take

control away from the beneficiaries and work at their pace. When working with humans

you need to accept there will be some success and some failures and evaluate where you

can make improvements for better results. It's as important to recognise and document

failures as it is to achieve goals.



Definitely. We make a little go a long way.



Yes

iii. How much money is spent on direct contact and engagement with the people vs on

internal operations?

We only have 1 employed staff member and she is from the community we serve. All other

funds raised go directly into projects.



55

Yes

v. Does the economic programme have a mentoring component that assists people for at

least 12 months after the main coaching has been completed?

Yes


themselves?

Yes

e. Is the non-profit contributing to society in a meaningful way? Would it be missed if it

didn’t exist? By whom?

Yes. Our ECD centres have even suggested they should pay to be members as they have

benefitted so much from our support this last year.

f. Does the NGO also put the individuals through personal development, mental health

development, and more ‘soft’ skills?

Yes, we are undertaking trauma informed schools training for ECDs and are working on a

parent training course including hard and soft skills. The soft skills are potentially more

impactful in a community like Lavender Hill where there is trauma and neglect.

g. Does the non-profit collaborate with other orgs in partnerships or to deliver parts of

programmes?

Yes, we have partnerships in everything we do, incl Montessori Centre SA for teacher

training, Rise Against Hunger for feeding at schools, Dress for Success for parent interview

skills, and more.


56

Free of Tuberculosis



objectives? YES Are the objectives aligned with the SDGs? YES Do they have clear

evidence that they meeting their objectives? 7 (Out of 10).


position/state, through engaging with the NGO, than they were when they started the

programme? Is there evidence from the ground? 8 (Out of 10).




incredible, 6 is average, 5 is eh, et cetera). 8


a. What does the NGO deal with? (a higher weighting should be given to NGOs who

deal with a greater causal factor of poverty).

Healthcare. Free of TB has a youth ambassador program to disseminate accurate, salient

information about TB, plays an active role in reducing drug-resistant TB and assisting

destitute TB patients where the public healthcare system falls short.


57


poverty? (This factor is incredibly crucial).

YES, but not enough.


YES. We work with hospitals and clinics and follow up on patient care for a period of 18-24

months.

It is pointless to have an NGO that is for example, a food kitchen for children, and does

not collaborate with other NGOs to make sure that the children can read for example, or

have a safe home, et cetera. This is the only way that NGOs can ever have a tangible

impact on decreasing poverty as a whole.

c. Does the NGO have a suitable monitoring and evaluation system (with suitable

metrics) that can empirically determine the success or failure of their program?

Not yet. It is a great idea, and we should do it as its essential to monitor performance

empirically. Many NGOs are usually guided by the funders mandates in this regard.

i. Are the indicators designed for both qualitative and quantitative data? N/A

ii. Does the NGO follow up with their graduates/past beneficiaries? YES, we follow up on all the patients who have been assisted as part of their treatment

program.



58

YES.



NO, we have no permanent staff employed and the NGO functions as a link between

patient and the public healthcare system.



NO

iii. How much money is spent on direct contact and engagement with the people vs

on internal operations?

100%


NO, they are dependent on the state for further support.

This is the main criteria in taking people out of poverty. If they are self-employed,

entrepreneurs, or employed, they can provide for themselves and their family, thereby

lifting them out of poverty. If an NGO is not working to achieve this, they are merely

plugging the gap and not fixing the proverbial source of the leak itself.

v. Does the economic programme have a mentoring component that assists people

for at least 12 months after the main coaching has been completed?

YES, the patients are usually on a treatment program of 18-24 months.


themselves?


59

YES, in a way it does where the youth ambassador program educates patients on the

disease and the importance of their treatment. It fills a gap where the healthcare system

does not have the funds or resources to support these patients.

e. Is the non-profit contributing to society in a meaningful way? Would it be missed

if it didn’t exist? Yes By whom? The patients and physicians who are searching for ways to

support them with limited resources.

f. Does the NGO also put the individuals through personal development, mental

health development, and more ‘soft’ skills?

NO. It’s a really good idea for us to incorporate this formally with the youth ambassadors.

g. Does the non-profit collaborate with other orgs in partnerships or to deliver

parts of programmes?

YES. But not enough is done with the lack of a dedicated resource.


60

An email of recommendations (Free of TB)

Dear Kunceda team,

Thank you for inviting us to use the tool you have developed. While we are a very young

NGO, the questions were thought-provoking and highlighted the following reflections for

us internally:

1. A distinct set of metrics aligned to our objectives will provide an evaluation of our

annual performance. This will clearly assist our funders in reporting on their

philanthropic contributions, but more so provide us with impactful messages when

approaching other funders.

2. Collaboration has been neglected on our side, and we have only interacted with those

in the social and healthcare services. Your questions helped us think about how we

could interact with other NGOs working in the same area and create a wider impact

that crosses social, healthcare, entrepreneurship and education.

These insights are helpful and we will be taking them forward.

We would like to recommend the following to your team in improving your tool:

1. Create an online tool where the data is collated. In this way, you would be able to

draw on trends in different sectors, identify challenges within sectors and better

support collaborative efforts.

2. Test your tool out on a sample of NGOs across sectors and evaluate its effectiveness

and user-friendliness. You would be able to then assess where your questions can be

better phrased, or structured to obtain better feedback in line with your objectives.


61

May I commend you all for a sterling effort in coming up with an idea to tackle a very

difficult question – one that has and continues to plague our world. I would like to leave

you with one thought: Helping to make a change in just one person or organization will

create a ripple that has the potential to turn into a wave of change.

Well done to the Kunceda team on creating a ripple of change!

Another email of recommendations (from I See U)

Dear Kunceda Team

The tool is helpful for the following reasons:

1. It serves to focus the NGO on its outputs. Sometimes organisations do things

because it’s always been done, without asking if it is effective/efficient. A tool like

this will require the organisation to think carefully and strategically about its

activities.

2. It forces the NGO to evaluate its effectiveness with reference to the impact on

beneficiaries, and not only with reference to its activities.

3. It highlights the importance and need for collaboration - critical in the context of

the multilayered and complex societal problem of poverty alleviation YET not a

popular concept in traditional NGO’s.

The tool would be more user-friendly if:

1. It introduced a set of questions by contextualising/explaining it and then listing

the questions (instead of interspersing questions and explanations.)


62

2. It clearly indicated which questions require a rating and which questions require a

YES/NO response or a narrative answer.

3. The numbering of questions were more stream-lined.

Allow me to congratulate you on an amazing effort. The tool you have developed shows

that you have grasped the challenges faced by those working in the NGO sector, and more

importantly the obstacles faced by those we are trying to serve. I commend you for your

insight and hard work.

I look forward to your presentation on the 29th of November!


63

Acknowledgements

We would like to take a moment to thank all the Big Ideas staff for the wonderful journey

we have taken over the past six months. Words cannot describe what a transformation in

our thinking has gone through, nor how grateful we are for it. We see the world in a new

light, and you all have inspired us to change the world. We’d like to acknowledge the

enormous time and effort put into making the very first Big Ideas program, and we’d like

to assure you that it was all worth it. A special thank you to Mr Henchie, our coach, and to

Mrs Douglas, who taught us a few valuable lessons about deadlines, failure, and the

research process. We would also like to thank Mrs Freund, who put up with our noise in

the library for an entire term, and to Mr Stemmett, for giving us transport to interviews.

We would like to thank Leanne Reid, Karen Nelson, Rowena Ravera, Khilona Radia and

Keertan Dheda for their time in testing our tool and responding to our questionnaire.

Last, but not least, Laura Bergh from the Poverty Stoplight, who made this entire project

come about, and who made us a lot wiser about the world around us.


64

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