Cover photo from Ubuntu Pathways*
Ubuntu Pathways’ approach to holistic development has drastically improved the lives of disadvantaged communities in a South African province
By Jan Schwier and Pritha Venkatachalam, The Bridgespan Group
In 1998, Jacob Lief, a third-year American university student visiting South Africa for a school project, had a chance encounter with a schoolteacher that changed his life. Lief – who previously had been involved with the Free South Africa movement – was then living in a Gqeberha (formerly Port Elizabeth) township where residents were caught in cycles of poverty caused by unemployment, lack of quality education, and rising cases of HIV/AIDS.
The schoolteacher Malizole “Banks” Gwaxula invited Lief to move in with him and his family and to work with him in the township school. It was a time when huge amounts of philanthropic capital from overseas corporations were flowing into South Africa, for major initiatives like setting up thousands of box libraries across the country. Most of the children in the townships of Gqeberha came from poverty-stricken homes and had illiterate parents who hadn’t had access to education.
The libraries would prompt more children to attend school. But Lief wondered whether that would be enough to help them break free of poverty. Is it enough to invest in children’s education if they don’t have a support network outside school, belong to a stable home, or have access to healthy foods and healthcare? Lief didn’t have all the answers, but he suspected he knew who would: the community itself.
This holistic thinking eventually gave rise to Ubuntu Pathways, a nonprofit that Lief and Banks co-founded in 1999. Its “cradle-to-career” strategy encompasses childcare, education, healthcare, and vocational and job service training, supporting young people as they build a healthy, stable future for themselves and their families.
As Lief notes, the organisation’s goal is to invest in disadvantaged children more deeply. Since its founding, Ubuntu has invested over 1 billion rand ($63 million) in Gqeberha’s townships through programmes co-designed and implemented by community partnerships and serves 2000 vulnerable children and their families today.
The Bridgespan Group closely studied Ubuntu’s journey as part of our report on community-driven change in urban informal settlements in the Global South. We strove to understand how pioneering NGOs build and share power with the communities they serve, and enable community members to lead their own change, taking a close look at two organisations in Africa and two in India.
Ubuntu’s approach can provide several lessons for other organisations that seek to drive impact for disadvantaged or marginalised populations.
- “Scaling in”: Ubuntu’s bottom-up approach differs from mainstream development models by focusing on the depth, rather than the breadth, of impact. Ubuntu believes in nurturing the skills of community members within a defined geography and providing them with platforms to champion their own change, rather than scaling a single service across multiple geographies. Ubuntu’s services include ensuring that pregnant mothers in the community – who may be HIV-positive – have the same access to healthcare, information, and nutrition that women in more privileged settings do. Many of Ubuntu’s former students have gone on to launch their own, independent efforts to support their communities.
- Leveraging local knowledge: 95% of Ubuntu’s staff comes from the townships in Gqeberha. They have intimate knowledge of the communities needs, challenges, and aspirations, which they then integrate into the programmes they co-design with other community members. Caseworkers visit clients’ homes to evaluate and address household-specific needs and then collaborate with teachers, nurses, and other staff members to implement tailored case-management plans.
- Demonstrating flexibility: In its first few years, Ubuntu focused primarily on education. During a community meeting where Ubuntu unveiled a plan to build a computer centre, a parent raised another, more pressing issue: Children in the community were dying from HIV/AIDS, which other children couldn’t understand. Ubuntu then decided to widen its lens and began to work on awareness campaigns, launching a programme to eliminate the transmission of HIV from infected pregnant women to their babies. It also built a state-of-the-art primary and preventative healthcare facility. Today, all the pregnant women with HIV who use Ubuntu’s OBGYN facility have given birth to virus-free babies.
Earning the trust of communities and working alongside them in their development is crucial to community-led approaches and increases the odds of achieving enduring change. Not every community-driven change effort follows exactly the same playbook. For instance, SHOFCO, another Africa-based organisation, works with communities but has a broader, country-wide vision for impact. Ubuntu and SHOFCO are two of many organisations that champion an approach that believes in incremental changes grounded in community needs and priorities. Its success serves as an incentive for both funders looking to support community-driven change and organisations seeking to make a difference in the lives of disadvantaged communities.
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*Photo Caption: Grade 4 student, Anga, learning math at the world-class Ubuntu School – where South Africa’s most vulnerable children receive an integrated support system of health, education, and household stability
Jan Schwier is a partner and co-head, Asia and Africa, at Bridgespan and is based in Johannesburg, South Africa. He serves both the philanthropy and nonprofit sectors, focusing on organisations with a significant global footprint or a strong focus on Africa. In addition, he works extensively with leaders on issues around strategic clarity as well as results measurement and learning focused strategy and capacity building.
Pritha Venkatachalam is a Bridgespan partner and co-head, Asia and Africa. She is based in Bridgespan’s Mumbai office. She has advised donors, governments, nonprofits, and the private sector across Asia and Africa on a wide range of global development opportunities. At Bridgespan, Pritha has led and co-authored several reports, and she also supports leading philanthropies and social sector organizations on their strategy, operating model, and results delivery.
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