The educational interventions of the NGO Ikamva Youth

NGOs continue to play a central role in the delivery of services in South Africa. Many of the gaps left by government in small and vulnerable communities are filled by community and nation-based organisations aimed at providing specific needs for communities. Education-based NGOs, more specifically, play the role of satisfying education and skills-related needs. This treatise is founded on the theoretical assumption that society functions just like a human body with all its different parts, or elements, interdependent: the one cannot function without the other. Central to this study is the understanding that when analysing and evaluating one area or element of society, it is vital to consider the impact of that area or element on other areas or elements of society. Such is the case with IKamva Youth, an NGO situated in Khayelitsha, a township on the outskirts of Cape Town. Although the organisation is independent and exists on its own terms, it is affected and influenced by the community and context within which it exists. Khayelitsha is considered a previously disadvantaged area, characterised by socio-economic challenges such as high levels of crime, poor quality of education, lack of sanitation, illness and disease and unemployment. IKamva Youth, situated in such a community, was founded with the purpose of addressing such issues. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the extent to which the organisation has been effective in doing so. Paying specific attention to the community of Khayelitsha and the challenges it faces, the effectiveness of the organisation was evaluated according the overall purpose of NGOs and this organisation’s own vision, mission, purpose and objectives. This evaluation was done using the organisation’s different programs which are tasked with the responsibility of carrying out the purpose of the organisation. These programs were outlined and explained and used as the units of measuring the extent to which the organisation has been effective. In order to obtain an in-depth knowledge of these programs, the organisation was first located within its broader context after which these various programs were evaluated for effectiveness using responses from sampled participants. A questionnaire and in-depth interviews were compiled as measuring instruments for this evaluation. Data collected by means of the instruments formed the central point of reference that crafted the conclusion that in the midst of a number of socio-economic challenges, IKamva Youth has been effective in carrying out its purpose as an NGO and fulfilling its own vision and mission

Aiding the education agenda? the role of non-governmental organisations in learner performance and retention in Joza, Grahamstown, South Africa

This thesis describes the network of complexities that characterise the world and work of Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs). It examines the ways in which organisations navigate different internal, sectoral and contextual intricacies while operating under the command of their chosen developmental mandates. This description is drawn from a sociological analysis of the internal workings of education NGOs, their external affiliations as well as the negotiations which underpin their operations and survival. Collectively, the careful illustration of these underpinnings outlines both the role that NGOs play in the performance and retention of learners in the Grahamstown-east township of Joza and also their position in the town’s basic education sector. Private and non-governmental interveners have, particularly from the closing decades of the 20th century, been conceptually and operationally deployed as panaceas of the socio-economic scarcities which continue to pervade much of the ‘developing’ world. Their involvement in the socio-economic missions of populations living in the Global South has grown both laterally and in the depth of how development is understood and defined, carried out and also measured. NGOs, as widely acclaimed institutional arms of global development imperatives, therefore assume prominent positions in framing policy and implementation models, prescribing performance benchmarks and pronouncing non-compliance. Likewise, education NGOs have obtained normative prescription status in global education policy and practice largely on the back of the Education for All (EFA) objectives, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the neo-liberal logics which have championed state retreat in favour of private sector ascendance in globalised development. This, in conjunction with the persistent struggles of educational transformation in the Global South, has given NGOs little trouble in legitimising their prominent presence in education and other sectors of socio-economic relief in these parts of the world. Little illusion remains however, in many commentary circles, of the role of NGOs in advancing development ideals, the honesty of their altruistic intents, their ideological leanings as well as their efficacy in carrying out their mandates. As such, the logics which have been used to dethrone developing state structures in order to expand the space for private intervention along with the prevailing and deepening markers of educational underperformance, have been central features of the criticisms levelled against NGOs. This thesis intervenes in these ongoing reflections by describing the role of NGOs in educational outcomes, particularly learner performance and retention in Joza. This analysis demonstrates the organisational, sector-level and broader community forces which influence not only the form which non-state interventions take on and the daily preoccupations of their carriers but broadly, the position they occupy in the town’s overall educational profile. By way of locating NGOs within Grahamstown’s educational landscape, this thesis first demonstrates, the conflicted nature of NGO operations from an international, sectoral, national, local and organisational level. The discussion then illustrates how the preoccupations of NGOs are scattered between the different communities which they occupy within these levels. Their reliance on these players demands that organisations be tactical in guarding both their survival and, at times, the conflicting allegiances which grant them different forms of legitimacy. Internal struggles which characterise this imbalance of forces results in a trade-off which often favours organisational preservation mechanisms over systemic educational overhaul. As such, while non-state interveners can be lauded for extending educational support to those who would otherwise not have such, the gains of NGO intervention are often absorbed by internal urgencies for organisational legitimacy and preservation. This, in a context which possesses a unique set of socio-economic and educational deficits that require, at the very least, radical and unbridled mediation, means that pre-existing inequalities in educational inputs and outcomes along with the resultant inequities in youth socio-economic prospects, can find refuge in the very sector whose support and intervention is sought out and justified for such. This thesis lays out the nuances of these tensions and contradictions and offers this case as a point of reference for further considerations of the persistent markers of underperformance which characterise developing communities that enjoy high concentrations of non-state educational intervention

"Being seen" at the clinic: Zambian and South African health worker reflections on the relationship between health facility spatial organisation and items and HIV stigma in 21 health facilities, the HPTN 071 (PopART) study.

Health workers in 21 government health facilities in Zambia and South Africa linked spatial organisation of HIV services and material items signifying HIV-status (for example, coloured client cards) to the risk of People Living with HIV (PLHIV) 'being seen' or identified by others. Demarcated HIV services, distinctive client flow and associated-items were considered especially distinguishing. Strategies to circumvent any resulting stigma mostly involved PLHIV avoiding and/or reducing contact with services and health workers reducing visibility of PLHIV through alterations to structures, items and systems. HIV spatial organisation and item adjustments, enacting PLHIV-friendly policies and wider stigma reduction initiatives could combined reduce risks of identification and enhance the privacy of health facility space and diminish stigma