South Africa peer-learning workshops

The South Africa CSO Strengthening Program has gone through two rounds of partners, the second of which will complete their projects in 2010. The first round of partner organizations completed their deepening round of workshops through which they were able to model successful approaches to each other and share strategies for change.

“No individual organization can do all the work – but multi-sectorally we can achieve a lot.”

“The organizations present here can’t work in isolation. In the struggle we need each other.”

 The Participating Partners (2004-2005)

• Justice and Women (JAW) actively creates new, more gender-equal norms within families and the broader community around sexuality, violence, custom and HIV/AIDS
• South African Commercial, Catering and Allied Worker’s Union (SACCAWU) is the main retail-sector trade union in South Africa. Its membership includes people who have been casual/temporary workers and typically not recognized or organized by unions
• Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) advocates for increased access to treatment, care and support services for people living with HIV and campaigns to reduce new HIV infections
• Women On Farms Project (WFP) strives to strengthen the capacity of women who live and work on farms to claim their rights and fulfill their needs

Peer-learning workshop outcomes

Sharing strategies for building women’s leadership in unions 

At the peer-learning workshops, a participant noted that new examples of women’s leadership have emerged in the labour movement: i.e. women leaders who are also farm-work leaders. Inspired by this example, WFP expressed a decision to work intensively with other unions around women’s leadership development. “When we used to call meetings with the trade unions, there would only be men around the table, but now we have a situation where some of the most powerful voices in the room are from women leaders," said a WFP participant.

JAW pointed out that SACCAWU appears have an amazing pool of strategies-and-techniques resources, as well as a knowledge of, and familiarity with, the blockages women face in the union. JAW suggested that SACCAWU might try to capture those learnings in their study circles, to create a vision of this alternative norm for themselves – this new leadership style, what it looks like, what it feels like and how it acts in the world – so that they can share it with a broader audience, as well as internalize it and keep it alive in the organization.

Sharing Strategies for Accessing Worker

WFP noted that JAW’s model of intervention relies on chiefs allowing JAW entry into their community. “I am sitting here thinking about parallels in our work because farmers can prevent us from farms, [which means] then we can’t access workers.” WFP asked JAW "if there is another way of working because it is also about challenging certain kinds of power and also about our understanding of how systematic change takes place over a long time.” The issue of access thus became an area for potential joint strategizing between these two organizations – how to gain access to workers.

Sharing Strategies for Organizational Growth

A participant from JAW expressed a desire to learn about organizational growth based on WFP's experience. “I really want to know more about how WFP started from small beginnings and how you actually made it bigger and bigger. We got stuck in the small beginnings and we just couldn’t generate the energy any further than that. I have enormous admiration for those of you who have gone from small beginnings to build such big constituencies.”

TAC said, “… we reflected on the things that we’ve learnt from JAW, the way they do their work. They don’t only focus on books but they pass their information through exercises such as role plays, which is something which we are doing but we are more focused on the books and less on the exercises."(TAC)

An organization's ability to borrow already tested models of growth and change from similar organizations enables them to create more efficient models for themselves, conserving their energies for their main work rather than spending time reinventing the wheel.

Strengthening Organizations

WFP created a vision for improving women’s access to land and a new outlook on life. “A new life would mean that men would be part of the process, and there would also be an acknowledgement that young women need a good foundation in the from of positive role models to look up to. Our vision also includes having a good sense of health in order to grow and develop ourselves… The landscape will change to the farmlands being controlled and owned by women, and we want move towards this in the 18 months.”