Afrika Tikkun

Afrika Tikkun (www.afrikatikkun.org) has historically operated all our programmes through our Centres of Excellence based in Johannesburg and Cape Town township communities. Throughout the last few years, we have expanded our vision to create impact beyond our walls. Creating a Tikkun movement that will have long term impact and sustainability inclusive of the entire nation and eventually beyond borders. We changed our model by shifting from a centralised model to a dual approach including a decentralised operational methodology leveraging off partnerships and existing community infrastructure.  

This expanded vision coupled with a call from the presidency of South Africa drove the Department of Social Development to strategically select Afrika Tikkun as a partner to take the successful existing Cradle to Career model to other communities with the backing of funding and human resources. A letter of intent was signed by the Minister of the Department (Hon. Ms. Lindiwe Zulu) in April 2020. Since then, we have agreed with the Department of Social Development that they would increase our current funding of about R10m with 15 % to support the Cradle to Career roll out.  

The above is in essence what funding and support would be used for.

I decided very early in my life that I wanted to dedicate my life towards uplifting people with a disadvantaged background. I started becoming active in the Non – Profit space since I was 21 when I started a Non – Profit called Rhiza (Babuyile) that still operates in South Africa (I am currently non-executive Chairman). Back then I lived in the Netherlands and was an economics teacher, but decided to leave everything behind to reach this purpose.  
 
I started in the Amazon Jungle in Brazil, Ghana and eventually decided to focus on South Africa. My personal life purpose to create as much impact as possible led me to partnering with Afrika Tikkun and two years ago, I was asked to become the Chief Executive Officer of Afrika Tikkun. Every three years I have assisted with at least doubling the impact of the NGO I work for. My vision is that poverty and inequality cannot be addressed appropriately through one specific intervention such as education, but that it must be addressed from a holistic and self-sustainability perspective, taking the complex context and culture into account. My main goal for the future is to significantly decrease inequality throughout South Africa and across borders.  

South Africa’s rate of youth-unemployment is 56%. 7,2 million people in South Africa are unemployed, of which 2,5 million are youth. Furthermore, an over-dependence on state social-security grants has resulted in limited and ineffective government spending towards addressing causal developmental issues (R567 of R1,288 billion spend on social grants in 2018/2019). 

Afrika Tikkun contributes to closing this gap through the Cradle to Career model and it’s Social Support Services: 

1. Early Childhood Development (ECD): focusses on developmental milestones for children aged 2-6 

2. Child and Youth Development (CYD): afterschool programme for children aged 7-18 focussing on career and personal development 

3. Youth Acceleration Programme (YAP): personal growth and becoming economically active for youth aged 18-21  

4. Career Development Programme (CDP): career guidance, job readiness training, industry specific training, job placement and bursaries for further learning for young people aged 19-29. 

Social Support Services  

a. Primary Health Care: basic healthcare services to enable performance in school 

b. Family Support Services: addressing needs regarding family circumstances through social workers 

c. Nutrition and food security 

d. Empowerment: focused on inclusion - LGBTI, disabled children and young people, 60% female

1 Holistic: our model recognises that additional impact can be achieved when multiple interventions are provided simultaneously. By offering a “basket of services” instead of focussing on one specific element, we recognize that the problems to be addressed are complex and multi-factored and we offer a solution at the root causes instead of at its symptoms. 

2 Self-sustainability: this relates to both our young people and our programmes. Our young people become self-sustainable because they are developed holistically through our model and become productive and citizens as a result. Our programmes become sustainable because of their design. Regarding the decentralised programme described before, an example is our ECD scale up programme, where ECD centres are uplifted towards higher quality centres, after which they become eligible for government grants as well as more / higher parent fees. 

3 Scalability: all our programmes are easily scalable. The centralised model as well as the decentralised model. The Centres of excellence can be scaled towards different areas. Local parties can be uplifted through centres of excellence or other partners. This is why we plan on increasing our impact significantly

Previously it was mentioned that we plan to implement our Cradle to Career and Social Support Services “basket of services” increasingly to a decentralised level. 

By decentralising the model and adopting it at scale, in partnership with other Community Based Organisations and Non Profits, we ensure that each community can receive the basket of services needed for young people to reach their age-appropriate developmental milestones and over time become economically active and independent of government support, through social grants.

We have currently managed to achieve an 89% school-readiness result and a 92% Grade 12 Pass Rate. In 2019 alone we placed nearly 2,000 people in permanent job opportunities. The C2C-360° model has been recognized both by corporate South Africa and the Department of Social Development, because of the educational, health and economic outcomes we manage to achieve. 

The decentralised approach will be very cost-effective as well because of the “business” models that are implementable (refer to the Early Childhood Development (Creche) example where increased quality is accompanied by access to government grants and increased parent fees). Moreover, existing human resources and infrastructure of existing NGOs are being used in this approach, saving costs significantly