CAPE TOWN SAFER COMMUNITIES INCUBATOR Fight for Peace, May 2016

SUMMARY Fight for Peace is establishing the Safer Communities Incubator (SCI), working alongside local partners, in Cape Town to help reduce youth violence in hotspot

communities. Fight for Peace’s youth crime and violence reduction methodology has

proven to be effective from the favelas of Rio de Janeiro to inner city London, and

has been adapted by over 140 partners worldwide.

This project will use a methodology known as Collective Impact to deliver youth

violence prevention programmes via multiple cross-sector partners in a systemic and coordinated way.

The project builds on FFP’s work in Cape Town over the last three years, supporting

local community organisations to adapt and deliver approaches to youth violence prevention based on the FFP methodology. The SCI process is as follows:

•  3-4 hotspot communities are selected

•  Groups of relevant multi-sector actors are established.

•  Training is provided in the FFP methodology and other youth violence reduction approaches;

•  Capacity building is offered to strengthen effectiveness;

•  A shared management information system is established to align data collection;

•  Seed capital is provided to help initiate programming;

•  International and local fundraising support to sustain and expand activities.

With the support of our Cape Town Advisory Partner, Safety Lab, we are now

consulting with relevant local parties as to how the SCI can best meet local need.

THE SAFER COMMUNITIES INCUBATOR

ABOUT FIGHT FOR PEACE •  FFP was founded in a favela in Rio de Janeiro in 2000 to use boxing to provide an

alternative to young people armed and employed in drug trafficking gangs.

•  Through a combination of delivery experience and ethnographic research, a

comprehensive “Five Pillar” approach was developed: Boxing and Martial Arts, Education,

Employability, Youth Support Services, Youth Leadership.

•  FFP delivers both ‘open access’ prevention activities and long-term interventions

targeting young people entrenched in gangs / violence.

•  FFP’s opened a second Academy in London in 2007. Across our two we now work directly

with 2,500 young people p.a.

•  FFP’s methodology has been proven in external evaluations to successfully reduce youth

crime and violence and increase young people’s life chances. A robust monitoring,

evaluation and learning framework underpins all FFP’s activities and the tools developed

within that are made available to our network of partners.

•  We launched the FFP Global Alumni Programme in 2012 to train other organisations in

the FFP methodology, support adaption to different local contexts, and build capacity for

sustainable delivery. To date over 140 organisations from 25 countries, including South

Africa, have been supported, reaching over 250,000 young people.

•  FFP has been working in Cape Town for three years with 7 local organisations: The Safety

Lab, Grand Commission United, OASIS, Future Champs, Nika Kumalo Boxing Academy,

Cape Town Flats YMCA, and TEPO Consulting.

•  SCI now builds on FFP’s experience both in Cape Town and around the world working in

diverse contexts to develop programming and organisational capacity to reduce youth

crime and violence in communities where resources are scarce.

THE SAFER COMMUNITIES INCUBATOR

THE SAFER COMMUNITIES INCUBATOR

FFP is currently undertaking a process of listening and engagement with to ensure the SCI is aligned to existing local youth violence reduction efforts at community and

policy levels, and inclusive of relevant partners and potential stakeholders

WHY THE SCI? Entrenched social issues, such as youth violence, are complex, broad, and multi-causal.

They therefore require coordinated multi-sector, multi-agency responses.

A single public or community actor rarely has the capacity to solve such complex

issues, and should not be expected to. Equally, funders, researchers and governments should not search for a ‘singular solution to youth violence, but should invest in

collaborative and integrated programming.

Collective Impact, an approach which has been successfully employed in the U.S. to solve complex problems in housing, environment and education, provides a model for

practitioners and stakeholders to collaborate effectively, coordinate approaches and

share measurement systems. Applying the approach in hotspot communities in Cape

Town will help support NGOs, public bodies, businesses and funders to align and coordinate their efforts, increasing the effectiveness of their youth violence initiatives.

FFP have appointed as project hosts and advisors, The Safety Lab, an innovation test

centre for community safety and security in the Western Cape, helping to ensure the approach is grounded in local violence reduction expertise.

The FFP team is fully funded for three years, after which the project will transfer to a

locally-led structure. The learnings from the project will be codified and applied in

other cities that suffer high levels of youth violence.

THE SAFER COMMUNITIES INCUBATOR

HOW THE SCI WILL WORK Establish a

collaborative network

3-4 hotspot communities will be selected where FFP partners have delivery presence, and a group of cross-sector stakeholders willing to commit services, expertise and / or resources will be set up.

Set a shared agenda

Partners will be facilitated to articulate a common violence reduction agenda, creating an aligned sense of purpose and strategic direction that maintains the project and drives momentum.

Set shared metrics

A set of quantified violence prevention and reduction metrics, inclusive of broad and diverse activities, will be defined to ensure activities that are delivered by several different organisations work towards the shared agenda, and that progress is measured within a comparable framework.

Design mutually reinforcing

activities

An holistic range of activities, aligned with the FFP Five Pillars, will be planned, coordinated, and where necessary designed and resourced, so that young people with complex and multi-causal needs can access opportunities that are well-integrated across delivery partners.

Ensure constant communication

Facilitated communication between partners will ensure delivery is well-coordinated, opportunities for growth are shared and collaborative, and learnings are gathered in real time

Driven by a backbone

organisation

FFP will facilitate this process to ensure activities are delivered and momentum is generated throughout the process. The most common cause of failure of collaborative initiatives is a lack of coordinating resource – this project will be driven by FFP’s four-person, full-time team on the ground.

THE SAFER COMMUNITIES INCUBATOR

FFP’S GLOBAL IMPACT TO DATE Within the two FFP academies, where we deliver services directly to young

people:

•  In Rio 100% of members feel more positive about their future; 91% have

better family relationships; 79% are less likely to get into fights; and 82% feel

calmer.

•  In London 100% feel more positive about the future; and 95% have stopped

getting into trouble at home, school, and on the streets.

Within our 140 partner organisations, through our Global Alumni Programme,

FFP’s work has had the following impact:

•  82% of partner CBOs demonstrated overall capacity increases;

•  88% have improved monitoring & evaluation systems including registering

members, monitoring attendance, and evaluating outcomes

•  72% of are reaching more young people than before they joined GAP, and 64%

of are reaching new target groups

Within our partner’s young people: With our support, our partners are increasing

young people’s resilience to involvement in crime and violence:

•  In Cape Town: 85% of participants feel more confident, 88% feel happier, 70%

feel less likely to join a gang, 85% feel less likely to bully others.

•  In Nairobi: 89% are less likely to carry a weapon, and 80% less likely to join a

gang.

•  In New York: over 80% feel more motivated, 70% feel better about themselves.

•  In Bristol: 89% of young people at risk of exclusion from school remained in

education.

FFP INPUTS AND OUTCOMES THE SAFER COMMUNITIES INCUBATOR

WHAT FFP WILL PROVIDE

A 4-person, full-time, experienced senior team,

Expertise on Collective Impact and violence

prevention: through local and international

experts, consultants and practitioners

Training and capacity building in the FFP

methodology, and other complimentary

approaches

Access to strategic seed funding to support

experimental activities, and support to access

additional funds to scale effective programming.

Monitoring and evaluation system – we will

provide all delivery partners with free access to

an online information management system

(Upshot) and M&E training and strategy support.

WHAT THE SCI WILL GENERATE

Effective collaborative structures bringing together delivery partners and other stakeholders within hotspot

Young people in hotspot communities will have greater

access to safe spaces and holistic integrated youth

development programming based on FFP’s 5 pillars.

Young people with personal level changes including:

•  Improved self-esteem, relationships with others, and

aspirations for the future.

•  Improved self-reliance as a result of progressing in

education or into employment

•  Long-term disengagement from crime and violence.

A model for community based, collaborative youth violence prevention that can documented, codified and thus sustained

in Cape Town and replicated in other parts of the world.

SCI TIMETABLE THE SAFER COMMUNITIES INCUBATOR

Phase 1: July – December 2016 •  Office and team set up •  Mapping of key violence reduction priorities •  Selection of hot spot communities

•  Engaging and recruiting multi-sector stakeholder groups •  Defining shared agenda and violence reduction metrics •  Set-up of MEL system with all delivery partners

Phase 2: January - June 2017

•  First round of programme design and implementation: high-quality, sport-based, holistic programming targeting prevention outcomes

•  Strengthening of CBOs to support delivery

•  Resource mobilisation to strengthen and develop programming

•  Monitoring and learning activities to inform programme roll-out

Phase 3: July 2017 – December 2018 •  Increasing depth and scope of programming offered to young people: full Five

Pillars in operation, working at scale, widened target audience to including interventions with young people involved in violence.

•  Ongoing strengthening of CBOs. •  Ongoing resource mobilisation. •  Ongoing monitoring and learning activities inform sustainability planning.

Phase 4: January – June 2019 •  Sustainability planning for long-term delivery of programming and operation of

Safer Community Incubator model in Cape Town •  Codification and replication of the approach in other cities affected by violence,

based on key learnings from Cape Town.

For more information and to find out how you can get involved contact James Baderman on james.baderman@fightforpeace.net