5) Description of health product/service offering: With an HIV prevalence rate of 34.5% in Port Elizabeth, every person in our communities is directly affected by the HIV/AIDS pandemic. For many people living with HIV, the first time they find out their status is when they develop opportunistic infections or in the case of young women, in the prenatal clinic. As a result there is huge unmet need for antiretroviral (ARV) treatment, new HIV/AIDS infections continue to soar, and people continue to die unneccesarily. With people between the ages of 13 to 25 accounting for 60% of new HIV infections in South Africa, those most at risk are young people. In 2001, Ubuntu launched the Mpilo-Lwazi Health Initiative, a community HIV/AIDS program targeting children, youth and adults. Our goals are 1) to prevent new HIV infection and onward transmission, and 2) assist children and families to cope with HIV/AIDS through access to treatment and support. Mpilo-Lwazi currently provides the following integrated HIV/AIDS services: • Lifeskills classes and on-site counselling and referral services in 15 primary schools and 8 high schools reaching 24,000 learners with HIV prevention education • HIV prevention outreach and community workshops targeting 25,000 at-risk youth/adults. • Voluntary counselling and testing services and AIDS treatment readiness and adherence services in public VCT/ARV clinics. • Case management services providing comprehensive assistance for 350 families in crisis due to HIV/AIDS, rape or abuse. • Community gardens at three primary schools and one ARV site to increase income and food resources for 90 families affected by HIV/AIDS and provide lunch for 1000 orphans and vulnerable children (OVCs). • After-school programs and day camps during school holidays for OVCs including health, literacy and technology lifeskills, mentoring and peer support, healthy meals, and arts and sports activities • Condom distribution of 1.2 million condoms per year

6) Description of innovation: Ubuntu Education Fund is founded on ubuntu, the Southern African philosophy that speaks to our common humanity, interconnectedness, and responsibility to each other. We used this philosophy to create the Ubuntu Model – a strategy that ensures community ownership of well-designed development programmes. Our headquarters are based in the townships in which we work and our staff are composed of people from these communities. This ensures a cultural fluency and project ownership that cannot be attained by many international NGOs that employ staff transplanted from other areas. At the same time, we have a small 3 person overseas support office that assists with international fundraising, research, and project development. This allows Ubuntu to escape from the trap that many developing country CBOs fall into -- being so enmeshed in the day to day crises of the local situation that they become reactionary and unable to distance themselves enough to take an objective long-term perspective.

We have found that many excellent grassroots initiatives have little measurable impact not because of a lack of effort, but because they lack the theoretical and research-based knowledge readily available to larger development institutions. This is particularly true in South Africa, where the systemic underdevelopment of Apartheid has undermined the educational attainment of the black population. For this reason we have created an organisation that combines the strengths of the grassroots community-based approach with the strengths of international expertise and networks, while conciously avoiding the pitfalls of both methods. We are a ‘grassroots NGO’ – our work is based on the simple tent that all communities have an array of resources and capabilities and we have the concurrent responsibility to utilise these assets to their fullest extent.

7) Operational model: HIV/AIDS does not occur in a social vacuum - the Ubuntu Model recognises that not only are there underlying social issues that facilitate the pandemic, for example poverty and misdirected education, but that the pandemic also exacerbates other social problems, such as child abuse and gender-based violence. We believe in building the capacity of local institutions to provide health services that are comprehensive, coordinating HIV/AIDS education, prevention, treatment, and advocacy and supplementing these with support services including counselling, referrals to law enforcement services, nutritional support, and access to employment and education bursaries.

Our entire organisation is designed specifically to reach out to marginalised populations – we have a 40 person outreach team, born and raised in the local communities, that allows us to reach different segments of the at-risk population. Our community outreach activities reach youth and young adults in high-risk sites such as clubs and taverns. The outreach team conducts community outreach via street-based interventions and workshops throughout the townships reaching over 500 people per week. Using innovative community mapping and networking strategies, they work with local leaders to organize workshops in churches, homes, markets, shebeens and hair salons-- everywhere community members congregate. Working in impoverished areas and informal settlements, we cover topics that contribute to HIV prevention, such as: gender roles, domestic violence, child abuse, and HIV stigma. We provide vital health information using interactive techniques that encourage participation and dialogue. We partner extensively with smaller CBOs throughout our target areas to offer joint workshops and cross-refer clients.

8) Human resources: Ubuntu’s Health program is comprised of 40 members (37 come from the communities in which we work) consisting of outreach workers, counsellors, case managers, health educators, and a researcher. Our Director, Lungi Fatyela, is from the Eastern Cape and has over 15 years of experience in the public health sector. She has a Bachelor’s in Nursing and an MPH. Lungi is a Monitoring and Evaluation specialist who started her career as a nurse and worked for 8 years in the Cape Town District Department of Health, coordinating TB/HIV and STI services. She also worked for the HIV/AIDS Directorate at the provincial level in the Western Cape.

Kym Alnwick serves as our international researcher, focusing on filtering in best practices and valuable information, and networking with donors and international partners. She has an MPH from Harvard’s School of Public Health, and was born and raised in East Africa.

Pinky Kondlo is a senior coordinator with a Bachelors degree in Pschology, and is currently pursuing her Masters. Born and raised in the townships of Port Elizabeth, she oversees our case management program.

9) Key operational partnerships: Ubuntu’s success depends on close relationships with community institutions. In order to maintain programmatic focus while addressing challenges holistically we must work hand-in-hand with organizations that have different fields of expertise. Below are descriptions of some of our most important partnerships: 24 Township Schools—Implementing partners in our literacy, technology and lifeskills education programmes. Department of Health—Encourages our capacity-building work with public health clinics, and invited us to join the Steering Committee for ARV Rollout which oversee implementation of public access to ARV treatment. Provides in-kind condoms and health materials. Nelson Mandela Metropole University, HIV/AIDS Centre- Training partners working with our staff in teaching methodologies and lesson-plan development and helping us to create a formal curriculum for our lifeskills classes. Rhodes University-Research partner conducting a formal evaluation of our counselling programme Childline-NGO referral partner on child abuse cases which assists in court preparation and provides counselling sessions with psychologists for our clients Hope Worldwide South Africa-NGO implementing and training partner working in nearby Motherwell Township. They provided intensive training in HIV counselling for our health team. We are establishing cross-referral systems and observation sessions to learn from each other’s experience in providing community HIV/AIDS services.

10) Financial Sustainability

          • Fees charged to clients?: No

          • How do you assure affordability?: Ubuntu Education Fund is proud of our diverse and loyal individual and institutional donor base of over 3,000 supporters. Last year we began working with our key donors to secure multi-year funding agreements, and have secured various grants for 2 to 5 year periods. We are proud to report that we have received our first bilateral funding from the Canadian International Development Agency, with further international government funding on the horizon. We are also confident that the measurable outcomes we will achieve over 2005/6 will open up new sources of funding for us from the South African government and other sources. We are actively pursuing these funding sources and establishing relationships with new prospective donors, with a focus on further diversifying our funding portfolio.

          • Earned incomes as a percentage of operating costs: 0

          • Other funding sources: We have an 8 year track record of increasing our funding base by 25% each year. Ubuntu works via an ongoing participatory process whereby projects are owned and operated by the people they serve. We do not enter into any projects that are designed as a short-term fix to a long-term problem - instead, we target problems at their roots. Ubuntu is committed to hiring directly from the pool of young adults in our community who graduate from high school but do not have the financial resources to continue education or job training. We invest heavily in their professional development through skill-based training--an important component of building sustainability in our programs and community.

          • Strategy for long-term sustainability: Ubuntu Education Fund is proud of our diverse and loyal individual and institutional donor base of over 3,000 supporters. Last year we began working with our key donors to secure multi-year funding agreements, and have secured various grants for 2 to 5 year periods. We are proud to report that we have received our first bilateral funding from the Canadian International Development Agency, with further international government funding on the horizon. We are also confident that the measurable outcomes we will achieve over 2005/6 will open up new sources of funding for us from the South African government and other sources. We are actively pursuing these funding sources and establishing relationships with new prospective donors, with a focus on further diversifying our funding portfolio.

11) Current and Future Impact

          • Total number of clients: 70,000

          • Clients in the past year: 40,000

          • Percentage of low-income clients: 100

          • Impact: Ubuntu has fostered a culture of discussion, especially at the school level because the ubuntu lifeskills teachers are young people who can engage kids in different ways than conventional school-teachers, for example through drama and poetry. In addition, when death is so pervasive, it causes an unconcious devauling of life. Treatment literacy specifically addresses this, affecting positive attitudes and behavior change when people understand that it is possible to live well with HIV/AIDS. Ubuntu also inputs skills and resources into the community through training of human resources; Ubuntu staff take their training with them, into the community, and each staff members’ salary supports an average of 12 other people.

          • Overall "market": The rolling out of comprehensive ARV services and support has faced bottlenecks throughout South Africa. South Africa as a nation is plagued by inconsistent messages from the government and media, a lack of ability to implement health programs at a local level, inability to roll out ARV treatment efficiently, and poor management and organisation at the school level. Thus there is a need for a comprehensive community health response in every low-income area in South Africa, especially in urban and peri-urban environments. In fact this model can be effective in any region facing high rates of HIV and extensive poverty.

12) Scaling up strategy

          • Stage of the initiative: Scaling Up stage.

          • Expansion plan: The primary goal of our project scale up is to develop more effective public/NGO partnerships that address the comprehensive needs of HIV-affected households. Ubuntu is partnering with public sites to increase provision of high- quality HIV services and provide a network of support for people living with HIV/AIDS and orphans and vulnerable children. We plan to increase access to VCT (voluntary counselling and testing) through direct service provision at four public clinics, and open a non-medical VCT centre on our own grounds to serve 8,000 people per year with confidential health and wellness services. We also aim to provide comprehensive and compassionate care for all vulnerable individuals through improved cross-referral networks with our clinic partners and with other community based organisations. This will include placing 4 professional nurses in 4 public clinics. By June 2008, we intend to increase VCT capacity at all 10 clinics by at least 150%, and see at least 10,000 clients in ARV therapy, all with access to other AIDS-related support services. When everyone in our community who needs treatment and related support is receiving it, Ubuntu will have achieved scale.

13) Policy change: The South African government needs to send a firm message to the public stating that HIV is a top priority, rather than undermining basic science and sending mixed messages. A coherent, evidence-based statement of authority and leadership regarding HIV/AIDS is crucial, and should be adopted by every department and municipality, from the highest to the lowest levels.

14) Origin of the initiative: Born in New York City, Jacob Lief met Banks Gwaxula in 1998 as a traveling University student. Banks invited Jacob to live in his home in New Brighton Township as family and teach with him in a township school. Jacob saw that despite immeasurable hardship, communities remained dedicated to the belief that education would allow their children to overcome Apartheid’s legacy of poverty, disease, and inequality. Six months later Banks and Jacob founded Ubuntu Education Fund. At a parents’ meeting in 2000, Banks and Jacob were receiving thanks for the new Ubuntu computer center when a mother stood up and asked what was going to be done about all the children dying. That year Jacob and Banks began planning the Mpilo Lwazi (Health Knowledge) Initiative. After a 6 month needs assessment with teachers, parents, and other community stakeholders, the first health curriculum was put in place.

Contact Information:
Kym  Alnwick
Development Officer
Ubuntu Education Fund
(NGO/CBO)
P.O. Box 14526, Sidwell 6061, Port Elizabeth
South Africa
Tel: 041 459 0627
Fax: +0414590627
Email: kym@ubuntufund.org
Website: www.ubuntufund.org