I.E. Annual Report

I v

n

O N

A

n

O

IMAGINE CHANGE

idea

FOR CHILDREN

ti

REPORT

ON THE FIRST

365 DAYS

EDGE

1 July 2014 30 June 2015

EARLY CHILDHOOD

FROM CONCEPTION TO THE AGE OF 6 YEARS = PERIOD OF UNPARALLELED OPPORTUNITY

FOR PROMOTING HUMAN POTENTIAL

C nTeN tS o

1 2 3 4

THE INNOVATION EDGE 2 THE INNOVATION EDGE TEAM 6 CONNECTING FOR INNOVATION 8 COMMISSIONING INNOVATION 4.1 4.2

12

Computer gaming to remediate foetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) 16 Mobile phone crowdsourcing to register ECD centres 17

18

4.4 DAPPS for renewable energy independent power producers 20 4.5 DAPPS to improve monitoring of preschool attendance and claims 21

4.6 Development of an Early Learning Outcomes Measure (ELOM) 22

4.7 Development of an innovation fund for ECD in South Africa 23 4.8 Neuroscience research translation and communication 25

4.9 Sifunda Ngokuthetha – language in the supermarket and clinic 26

4.10 Ukonga - stokvels for ECD 27

4.11 Workflow boards to improve ECD systems efficiency 28 4.3 DAPPS to digitally enable early childhood development programmes

5 6

COMMUNICATING INNOVATION 30 NOTES 32

The Innovation Edge | 1 July 2014 – 30 June 2015

1

1 - THE INNOVATION EDGE

S

Bringing Innovation to Early Learning in South Africa South Africa is brimming with bold,

creative innovators and entrepreneurs. As a country, we can lay claim to many innovations across a wide range of sectors. From the first heart transplant to the invention of the CAT scan, the launch of popular e-payment company Paypal, and the engineering of Dolosses, which protect harbours around the world from the erosive force of ocean waves. The Innovation Edge was established in July 2014 to bring this spirit of innovation to the early learning space in South Africa.

The Innovation Edge is the Research and Development arm of a national ECD programme called Ilifa Labantwana. Ilifa was established in 2010 as a multidonor partnership involving the DG Murray Trust, the FNB Fund, the ELMA Foundation and the UBS Optimus Foundation.

In collaboration with government and civil society partners, Ilifa provides implementation evidence to support the provision of quality ECD services and helps to create the systems necessary to enable the delivery of these services at scale to the poorest 40% of the population from birth to 6 years of age.

In 2014, the Ilifa donors partnered with the Omidyar

2

The Innovation Edge | 1 July 2014 – 30 June 2015

network to extend Ilifa’s capacity to generate and test innovations around early learning through the establishment of the Innovation Edge (the Edge).

The systems for scale that are created through Ilifa’s collaboration with government and civil society complements the Edge’s flexibility and capacity to innovate within early learning, creating a dynamic force for change.

What do we mean by innovation?

The term Innovation is often associated with ideas that are transformative, disruptive breakthroughs that change society and that are so big and powerful that others continue to build on it for generations to come.

But the reality is that transformative innovation is rare and while it can radically shake up the status quo, it is by no means the only approach to change. In most instances, ideas on the innovation spectrum are more evolutionary than revolutionary.

Evolutionary innovation tends to be incremental in nature, gradually changing products, processes or systems in a migration towards enhancement.

Social innovation is simply the application of

1 - THE INNOVATION EDGE

innovation – whether evolutionary or revolutionary - for social good. Importantly, innovation for social good is not the exclusive domain of the social sector.

Social innovations can take place in the for-profit, nonprofit and public sectors, and very often the most innovative ideas happen in the spaces between these three sectors, as different perspectives collide to spark new ways of thinking.

The Innovation Edge supports the development, implementation and evaluation of both revolutionary and evolutionary approaches to innovation, to harness the incredible potential for human development that lies in the period between conception and six.

The Edge is committed to creating an environment in which innovation flourishes.

Why innovate for early learning?

Early childhood – from conception to the age of 6 years - is a period of unparalleled opportunity for promoting human potential. During this stage of development the brain goes through an incredible transformation. By the age of 2 years, a child has up to twice as many neural connections as s/he will have in adulthood and these connections are gradually lost or strengthened over time. The kinds of connections that are strengthened or lost will depend on the child’s early life experiences – positive, supportive experiences that make a child feel safe and stimulated will lead to strong neural connections in the parts of the brain that support learning and healthy emotional growth. Stressful, unstimulating early life experiences have the opposite effect on the developing brain, with disastrous long term consequences for individuals and society.

By providing appropriate early childhood development services, we can literally shape the architecture of the developing brain. In many countries, increased understanding of the importance of early childhood has led to increased research and investment in this area. And these investments will pay off.

The same is needed in South Africa, where 60% of

Connecting for innovation

We believe that this is best done through:

Bringing together diverse interests and expertise to contribute to the development, implementation, evaluation and scale of innovation

Commissioning innovation Contributing to the development and funding of innovations that enhance early learning ecosystems, access, quality and outcomes

Communicating innovation Enabling the lessons from innovations and from analysis of innovation processes to inform real change for children, at scale.

children under the age of six years live in the poorest 40% of households.

Despite persuasive evidence on the importance and economic merits of investing in the development of children from as early an age as possible, South Africa continues to spend significantly less per child on early learning services than it does per child on secondary education, where the returns on investment are far lower. Less than 40% of young children in SA have access to early learning programmes and for those that do have access, the quality of programmes is often so poor that nonattendance may be preferable.

Young children are naturally vulnerable by virtue of their age and in SA they are additionally so because of their disproportionate exposure to conditions of severe poverty and multiple associated deprivations.

Poor early life experiences for children negatively impact school performance, reduce long term earning potential and increase the likelihood of engaging in risky behavior and experiencing poor health into adulthood. This in turn negatively impacts parenting which reinforces the cycle of poverty and exclusion.

LESS THAN

40% OF POOR

YOUNG

CHILDREN IN

have access to

EARLY LEARNING

programmes

The Innovation Edge | 1 July 2014 – 30 June 2015

3

1 - THE INNOVATION EDGE

Innovation in this space is desperately needed to break the cycle.

Investment in Early Childhood Development today has positive effects on national education, social, healthcare and economic goals down the line.

Breaking the cycle of poverty

Poor quality ECD

WE ARE HERE

The cycle of Poverty

Low

Poor household

ENT STM ECD E V IN IN

More household income

The rate of return to investment in human capital is highest during early childhood when the rate of physical and mental growth is fastest

4

The Innovation Edge | 1 July 2014 – 30 June 2015

High earning potential

Poor education outcomes

ning potential ear

WE NEED TO BE HERE

Good quality ECD

Good education outcomes

MORE

THAN OF

60%

SA children

6yrs UNDER

LIVE IN THE

POOREST

40%

OF HOUSEHOLDS

2 - THE INNOVATION EDGE TEAM

The Innovation Edge team Sonja Giese is the director

of Innovation Edge. She has over 20 years experience in programme design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation, and is passionate about ensuring the rights of every child to survival and development and to enhancing the systems necessary to enable service delivery at scale.

Ezlyn Barends provides

project support at the Innovation Edge. Recognised as one of Mail & Guardian’s Top 200 Young South Africans and a World Economic Forum Global Shaper, she is driven by a passion to contribute to the economic and social progress of the African continent. Entrepreneurial by nature, she has built various social development organisations.

Innovation Edge Investment Committee

The Innovation Edge Investment Committee provides strategic direction, oversight and governance and makes the final decision on all grant allocations. The committee comprises representatives of the five funders.

Heather Sherwin is as an Investment Manager at ELMA Philanthropies Services.

Vineet Bewtra leads Omidyar

Network’s education initiatives in Africa.

David Harrison is the CEO of the DG Murray Trust.

Maya Ziswiler is the Program Director in

the areas of education and early childhood development at the UBS Optimus Foundation.

Adam Boros is a senior client relationship manager at Tshikululu Social Investments and is responsible for managing the FirstRand Foundation.

6

The Innovation Edge | 1 July 2014 – 30 June 2015

2 - THE INNOVATION EDGE TEAM

Innovation Edge International Advisory Group

The work of the Innovation Edge is also guided by the expertise of an international advisory group.

Ayla Goksel is CEO of Ozyegin Social Investments, presiding over ACEV (Mother Child Education Foundation), Hüsnü M. Özyeğin Foundation and İz Child Development Centers.

Kofi Marfo is the Founding Director of the Institute for Human Development at the Aga Khan University (South-Central Asia, East Africa & London).

Mirjam Schöning is Global Head, Programs and Partnerships,

of the Lego Foundation, which seeks to empower children to become creative, engaged and life-long learners.

Tamara Hasan Abed is Senior Director of BRAC Enterprises. She heads BRAC’s 16 social enterprises.

Richard Kohl is the founder and principal at the Center for Large

Scale Social Change LLC, which provides strategic thinking and planning, thought partnership, coaching and process analysis with a primary emphasis on scaling up of high-impact innovations.

What do we support?

We are open to exploring new ways of thinking, processes, systems or products from all sectors provided that the project or idea: • Is aimed at improving early learning outcomes.

• Focuses on children between the ages of 0 and 6 years and/or on the period of development during pregnancy.

• Is implemented in South Africa.

• Has the potential for large-scale impact at an economical cost in marginalised communities.

The Innovation Edge encourages social innovators to experiment with ideas that include unusual partnerships that cut across organizational, sectoral or disciplinary boundaries.

The Innovation Edge | 1 July 2014 – 30 June 2015

7

O THE BEST IDEAS HAPPEN IN THE SPACES BETWEEN DIVERSE SECTORS, AS DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES COLLIDE TO SPARK NEW WAYS OF THINKING

O

3 - CONNECTING FOR INNOVATION

Connecting unlike minds for innovation Over the past year experience has taught us again and again that diversity drives innovation more effectively than anything else. In a context where sectors operate

Here are some of the ways in which we have done this over the past

Potluck Sessions

Innovation Edge Potluck Sessions involve a gathering of unlike minds. The sessions bring together individuals who have demonstrated creative problem solving skills within their particular sectors and encourage them to apply their minds to early learning. Innovation Edge hosted two Potluck Sessions over the past 12 months, in collaboration with the Bertha Centre for Social Innovation and Deloittes. Held in Cape Town and Johannesburg, the events demonstrated how various industries can contribute to changing the ECD landscape in South Africa, not least by simply thinking differently about what they already do. Ideas from the two sessions have been taken forward in various ways – sparking in-house changes within the organisations that were represented and leading to the establishment of diverse teams to further develop and test ideas.

One of the ideas emerging from the JHB Potluck was to mobilize the incredible power of stokvels to influence early learning practices and support the provision of early learning resources. With lots of support for the idea, we needed an individual or team to take it forward. Inspired by the work of the Ubunye Foundation in the Eastern Cape, we partnered

12

in silos, the Innovation Edge plays an important role in creating opportunities for individuals with diverse interests and expertise to connect.

GATHERING OF UNLIKE MINDS.

months

potluck packs punch

them with the dynamic founder of Expressive Promotions, a marketing communications agency specialising in stokvel- focused activations. Through this partnership, the Ukonga project was launched, to test the potential of leveraging the stokvel platform to promote early learning understanding and practices in targeted communities.

The Edge continually explores and develops new approaches to identifying and generating ideas.

The Innovation Edge | 1 July 2014 – 30 June 2015

9

3 - CONNECTING FOR INNOVATION

ECD Hackathons

10

What happens when you place a group of programmers in the same room as a group of ECD professionals and ask them to brainstorm solutions for early learning challenges in South Africa? The Innovation Edge in collaboration with the Bertha Centre for Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship, the Department of Psychology at Stellenbosch University, Silicon Cape and GovHack, hosted the first ever Hackathon for ECD in June 2015. The results were explosive and teams generated a number of cost-effective, scalable solutions for

early learning challenges. On the day of the event, the ECD hackathon was the top trending tweet in South Africa, generating invaluable coverage for the Innovation Edge.

The winning team came up with an application dubbed the “Tripadvisor for crèches.” The app addresses the problems parents looking for reliable childcare services face in their communities, by creating a mobile website that allows them to find and review childcare services.

Inspired by the idea of fostering unlikely conections, one of the teams participating in the hackathon went on to create and launch an exciting innovation called Bits4Good – connecting bitcoin traders and ECD practitioners to build the first bitcoin crowdfunding platform of its kind, focused on fundraising for early

learning. The project, spearheaded by RLABS, seeks to channel micro-bitcoin donations on an internet platform to fund small grants to specific ECD centres and projects. The site was created and launched within 48 hours of the hackathon and has already received phenomenal local and international interest and coverage.

The Innovation Edge | 1 July 2014 – 30 June 2015

3 - CONNECTING FOR INNOVATION

The Innovation Exchange The innovation exchange is a platform integrated on the Innovation Edge website where we post specific challenges that we’d like to see addressed and highlight opportunities for innovation that have been identified through the work of Ilifa Labantwana and other partners. The Exchange allows for ideas to be shared and discussed online and encourages unusual partnerships amongst applicants. Ideas that are submitted through the innovation exchange are reviewed by the investment committee for funding and/or technical support. The two challenges that have been profiled thus far on the innovation exchange looked at (1) how to transform waiting

places into engaging spaces for caregivers of young children and (2) invited individuals to explore ways of redirecting their profession, skills or hobbies to create new solutions for ECD. In addition to these group-based approaches to connecting, the Innovation Edge increasingly bridges different spaces and is therefore able to foster connections between individuals who might otherwise never have met. In some instances, simply making these connections has been sufficient to spark innovation independently of our active involvement.

Book Dash gathers volunteer creative Can sensitive book-sharing between a carer and an infant promote infant cognitive professionals – including writers, and language development. The illustrators, designers, photographers, technical and art University of Stellenbosch set out An Innovation directors and storytellers - to to test this through randomized Edge connection create new, African storybooks control trials in SA and Lesotho. resulted in a The intervention involves that anyone can freely translate mutually beneficial and distribute avoiding training carers (mainly mothers) collaboration in sharing books with their the prohibitive costs often between these two associated with publishers. The infants and young children. One projects challenge faced by the Book Dash of the challenges faced by the team is how to distribute the books Stellenbosch team is how to find to ensure that they get into the hands affordable books suited to the target age, appropriate to the cultural context and of the people who most need them. available in vernacular.

The success of the Innovation Edge is measured in part by the number and range of ideas that are submitted for consideration, by the diversity of applicants and by the extent to which applications involve unlikely or unusual partnerships.

idea

The Innovation Edge | 1 July 2014 – 30 June 2015

11

T 4 - COMMISSIONING INNOVATION

Building our 105 portfolio of projects APPLICATIONS

RECEIVED IN 9 MONTHS

The Potluck sessions, Hackathons and Innovation Exchange described in the previous section are just some of the ways in which we source ideas for the Innovation Edge. A parallel open and ongoing call for expressions of interest is widely marketed through radio and print media, social media, our e-newsletter, website and that of Ilifa, others’ electronic newsletters, SANGONET, the South African Innovation Network, partner websites,

knowledge and innovation hubs, conferences, via our global networks and direct targeting of particular audiences (including 7 universities).

We also seek out ideas through analysis of private sector business models and supply chains, understanding positive deviance in the early learning and parenting space, and through scanning entries submitted to other relevant local and international competitions.

Potluck sessions: gathering unlike minds

International advisory group

Networks

Web-based innovation challenge/ marketplace

Pitch session

Here are a few different approaches to generating innovative ideas for early learning: Private sector platforms

Collective idea generation

International competitions

12

The Innovation Edge | 1 July 2014 – 30 June 2015

Re-composing ideas

Positive deviance

4 - COMMISSIONING INNOVATION

Experience so far suggests that the combination of broad-based exposure together with actively promoting ‘connections’ is critical for innovation in this space. Our application processes have therefore been designed to:

Online applications 25 20

• Reframe early learning in a way that attracts interest from a broader range of stakeholders

15

• Market our call beyond “the usual suspects”

10

• Promote diversity of collaborative agents • Ensure a low barrier to entry for first stage applications Our online application process went live in October 2014. This is an ongoing open application process.

A total of 105 applications were received through this online process over nine months.

Up until March 2015 the majority of applicants reported finding out about the Innovation Edge through ECD networks and via our partner websites – most notably the DG Murray Trust and Tshikululu sites. Over the past three months however this pattern has shifted as the work of the Innovation Edge is increasingly profiled across multiple platforms and sectors. This is a positive trend which we hope to continue as we purposefully cross sectoral boundaries in our efforts to inspire and source innovation.

5 0 Oct -14

Dec -14

Nov -14

Feb -15

Jan -15

Apr -15

Mar -15

Jun -15

May -15

E.Cape, 9

W.Cape, 31

Free State, 2

The graph shows the geographic spread of applicants, with the vast majority of applications so far coming from organisations based in Gauteng and the Western Cape.

MP, 12

Gauteng, 37

N.West, 1 Limpopo, 3

KZN, 10

The Innovation Edge | 1 July 2014 – 30 June 2015

13

4 - COMMISSIONING INNOVATION

In year 1, we approved 13 projects for investment, with proof-of-concept work currently underway in six of the nine provinces (no work is happening yet in Limpopo, Mpumalanga and Free State).

Limpopo DAPPS

Mpumalanga North West

Gauteng

Free State

KwaZulu Natal

Northern Cape Workflow boards ABFAB

Eastern Cape Crowdsourcing

Western Cape SIB ELOM FASD

14

Lang in shops & clinics

The Innovation Edge | 1 July 2014 – 30 June 2015

Stokvels

4 - COMMISSIONING INNOVATION

The table below maps the current project portfolio against the Innovation Edge priority areas.

It highlights areas where more attention is needed in finding innovative solutions and/or where innovation may be more difficult, most notably the human resource supply chain.

Priority areas for innovation

Projects currently underway

Sustainable early learning delivery models that can deliver quality and scale

Decentralised applications (Dapps) to digitally enable early childhood development programmes at scale.

Innovative financing or cofinancing models focused on quality and efficiency

Development and testing of a social impact bond as an innovative financing mechanism for increasing investment in early learning.

Technology in engaging parents and practitioners

ABFAB - The use of mobile phones to deliver co-ordinated daily messages and content to ECD practitioners, parents and care givers to promote early learning in centre and home settings.

The supply of trained ECD workers and microentrepreneurs in early learning

No projects currently in this priority area.

Pedagogic innovations

Computer gaming as a way to address the special learning needs of children with neurological damage associated with Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder.

Decentralised applications (Dapps) for renewable energy independent power producers.

Early Learning Outcomes Measure - A simple, standardized assessment tool that will enable evaluations of early learning programmes for children prior to Grade R (school reception year).

Innovation for improved systems efficiency

Decentralised applications (Dapps) to support improved ECD registration processes.

Decentralised applications (Dapps) to improve efficiency and accuracy of child attendance and claims processes for payment of government subsidies to ECD programmes.

Factory-style workflow boards to address ECD registration systems constraints.

Crowdsourcing as a means of identifying and verifying the existence of ECD services across the country.

Early learning communications innovation

The development of easy-to-understand metaphors on the structure and function of brain development to inform a human-centred approach to behavior change.

Sifunda Ngokuthetha – a project aimed at transforming every day waiting places into engaging spaces, starting with clinics and supermarkets.

Ukonga - Adapting commercial models for collective savings and purchases (co-operatives and stokvels) to achieve early learning goals.

The Innovation Edge | 1 July 2014 – 30 June 2015

15

4 - COMMISSIONING INNOVATION

Our current portfolio of projects include innovations in the use of technology, communications, new financing mechanisms, systems enhancements and pedagogy for early learning.

Each of these projects is described briefly below, with the exception of ABFAB which has not yet been initiated.

4.1

COMPUTER GAMING TO REMEDIATE FOETAL ALCOHOL SPECTRUM DISORDER (FASD) The need

South Africa has the highest reported prevalence of Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) in the world.

FASD is caused when mothers drink during pregnancy and is more common than Down Syndrome, Spina Bifida and Autism combined. FASD is associated with growth deficits, birth defects and neurological damage and children with FASD typically struggle with attention, working memory and executive functioning. While the damage caused is permanent, the neurological deficits can be improved through interventions due to plasticity of the developing brain. Unfortunately, in South Africa’s resource poor communities little is available in terms of interventions to address neurological deficits in children with FASD.

Outputs and Outcomes

The Innovation

Inspired by the idea of “playful learning” -- where games are used to teach skills usually taught in more formal ways -- and research into neurodevelopmental assessments for FASD diagnosis, Jaco Louw is developing a computer game for children with FASD. The game will engage children with FASD in cognitive training that stimulates neuroplasticity – the brain’s ability to form new neural connections.

• The game will be fun so that children will be intrinsically motivated to engage with it for longer periods of time as opposed to formal training sessions.

• The game will be open source, thus freely available, and easy to distribute. It can be used independently in rural areas, where many children with FASD live, filling the gap caused by a lack of resources and trained interventionists.

The Objective

To improve cognitive functioning for children with FASD and reduce the incidence of secondary disabilities, such as poor educational outcomes and poor mental health outcomes in a way that is free and scalable.

At the end of the project’s first phase (one year) a working prototype of the game will be developed and piloted on a small group of children.

Outputs in progress

Timeframes

Outcomes

A working prototype of the game will be developed and piloted on a group of children

March 2015 - March 2016

Improved cognitive outcomes in children with FASD, including improved working memory, attention and inhibitory control Reduced incidence of secondary disabilities in children with FASD

The Team

The Foundation for Alcohol Related Research (FARR) is the leading NGO source of research and information on Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD) and the most severe form of this disorder, Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) in South Africa.

16

The Innovation Edge | 1 July 2014 – 30 June 2015

Jaco Louw is a project manager at the Foundation for Alcohol Related Research, working on FASD awareness and prevention programmes. He holds a master’s degree (cum laude) in Psychology at Stellenbosch University. The project on gaming as remediation for FASD is part of his proposed PhD.

4 - COMMISSIONING INNOVATION

4.2

The need

Department of Social Development (DSD) funding and support for early learning is not reaching those who need it most because information on ECD centres in the most marginalized communities is not accessible to the Department of Social Development and other potential supporters.

contributions from members of the public. Crowdsourcing has been successfully used to gather information from the public in a number of fields, including astronomy, journalism and ornithology. This innovation applies crowdsourcing to early learning.

Through crowdsourcing, the project will incentivise community members – parents, relatives, teachers, and those in the ECD field – to tell us about hard-to-reach ECD centres via mobile phone. Multiple different sources of the same information will assist us with verification. Potential participants would learn about the initiative through community radio advertisements, printed posters and word of mouth.

The Innovation

The Objective

MOBILE PHONE CROWDSOURCING TO REGISTER ECD CENTRES

In partnership with Code for South Africa, the Innovation Edge is testing the use of crowdsourcing through mobile technology to ensure that all ECD centres are mapped as the first step to registration with the Department of Social Development and potential funding. The term crowdsourcing was coined in 2005, and refers to the process of obtaining information on services or events by inviting

The project aims to find an efficient and viable way of using crowdsourcing to identify ECD centres, particularly those serving the most marginalised communities. It also seeks to answer questions around project design: Do we need to offer prizes to motivate people to take part? What are the most effective advertising channels? Does peer-topeer marketing work? What is the quality of data received?

And what mobile devices are practical to use?

Outputs and Outcomes Outputs in progress

Timeframes

Outcomes

A crowdsourcing tool adapted / designed for this purpose

June 2015 – October 2015

Identification and verification of currently ‘invisible’ ECD sites in at least one district municipality in KZN

Key messages for communication campaign

Populated database of ECD centres linked to Ilifa workflow boards to support Department of Social Development’s Massification objective

The Team

Code for South Africa is a civic technology lab using data and technology to change lives.

Increase in number and proportion of ECD centres entering the registration process

+ +

Adi Eyal is the director of Code for South Africa and is a data evangelist.

The Innovation Edge | 1 July 2014 – 30 June 2015

17

4 - COMMISSIONING INNOVATION

What is a blockchain?

A blockchain is a new type of computer technology that anyone can upload programs to and leave the programs to self-execute, where the current and all previous states of every program are always publicly visible, and which carries a very strong cryptoeconomically secured guarantee that programs running on the chain will continue to execute in exactly the way that the blockchain protocol specifies.

18

4.3

DECENTRALISED APPLICATIONS (DAPPS) TO DIGITALLY ENABLE EARLY CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMMES

PERSON A

PERSON A

IF

THEN

The need

In South Africa more than 2.5 million children under the age of four are living in poverty. Early childhood development interventions make significant differences to these children’s lives. But delivering these interventions at scale is enormously challenging since most ECD programmes tend to be fragmented, top-down, inefficient and costly to administer.

Better mechanisms are needed to systematically scale up interventions and early childhood development services that work, particularly in poor communities.

The Innovation

9Needs is developing mobile technology that has the potential to digitise and improve ECD service administration, management and delivery. This mobile technology is based on blockchain principles, which underpins crypto-currencies, such as Bitcoin.

This work is inspired by seeing the value of data in increasing transparency in the aid sector, and the study of social physics, which shows how incentives and information flowing through connected networks of people generates powerful social learning and social change. It is also inspired by 9Needs’ belief in the right individuals have to own their personal information.

Outputs and Outcomes Outputs in progress

Timeframes

Develop and launch digital platform January 2015 – April 2015 id-io.org Develop and launch prototype of a simple Decentralised Application Interface

The Innovation Edge | 1 July 2014 – 30 June 2015

Outcomes Social benefit organisations more effectively able to create and manage trustworthy registries of their agents and beneficiaries ECD providers able to code their ‘business rules’ in such a way that processes - such as registration, incentives, monitoring, payments can be automated.

4 - COMMISSIONING INNOVATION

Id-io.org is an open-source and freely available platform for use by developers and the development community. The Platform • Offers social benefit organisations a much more effective mechanism to create and manage trustworthy registries of their agents and beneficiaries.

• Allows registries to be shared between organisations to record, update, validate, deliver, receive, store and distribute associated information about services or benefits that are delivered to eligible beneficiaries.

• Enables digital referencing of transactional meta data, value transfers & personal information as Data for Development (D4D), for public good.

• Stores key identity assets on a public block-chain, with associated private information secured by encryption.

Access is determined by domain-specific permissions.

• Provides children with their own Digital Wallet, and an online place to securely store important personal information, including digital scans of enabling documents.

The Decentralised Application Interface designs and deploys Smart Agreements for ECD, using mobile devices. The application enables ECD providers to code their ‘business rules’ in such a way that processes - such as registration, incentives, monitoring, payments - can be automated.

• Each agreement template can be extended to associate media, data forms, reports and other public content or personal data with an agreement or task.

• The platform allows users to define triggers to 3rdparty web services (such as payment gateways) and interfaces with feature phone users through an SMS gateway (can be extended to USSD).

• The platform operates through an Application Programming Interface (API) that can create a permanent record of agreement data in the blockchain.

• The application has potential to create a public repository of Smart Agreement Templates that can be shared and deployed by development organisations.

• Future evolution of the concept could be encoded into the Ethereum blockchain (when this is released).

The team is now designing and testing business model innovations that will deploy DApps to scale up

social benefit flows and services for children. These are described below.

The Team

Project partner: 9Needs is a start-up incubator for digital technologies that can greatly impact on people’s wellbeing. Driven by human-scale development values, 9Needs helps to discover, design, build and improve health, social and care systems.

• Dr Shaun Conway is a medical doctor and founder of 9Needs. He explores, designs and invests in pioneering health and human development startup opportunities.

• Grant Pidwell is a digital warrior who believes in the power of code to positively transform how the world operates.

• Dr Sam Surka is a medical doctor who sees the possibilities of a connected future for medicine that is exponentially more predictive, preventive, personalised and participative.

MOBILE TECHNOLOGY IN AFRICA IS THE FASTEST GROWING MARKET.

MOBILE PENETRATION IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA IS EXPECTED TO INCREASE FROM

52% 79%

IN 2012 TO IN 2020.

IN TERMS OF MOBILE PHONE USAGE, SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA WILL BE THE FASTEST GROWING REGION GLOBALLY OVER THE NEXT

7 YEARS.

SOURCE: FROST&SULLIVAN, 2015

The Innovation Edge | 1 July 2014 – 30 June 2015

19

4 - COMMISSIONING INNOVATION

4.4

DAPPS FOR RENEWABLE ENERGY INDEPENDENT POWER PRODUCERS

The need

International renewable energy independent power producers (REIPP) get 20-year licenses to operate in South Africa. These operators are required to invest in local communities. But reporting back to the Department of Energy on the investment outcomes is onerous due to cumbersome systems and unclear requirements. When it comes to investing in ECD, there is a need for valid parameters to measure benefits and a way to make reporting more efficient for ECD service providers, especially in poor, remote communities.

The Innovation

DApps will provide management applications for ECD services, allowing them to better monitor and report on the use of investments, and the services they offer.

For example, an ECD centre could use funding from a renewable energy power producer to pay for 150 playgroup sessions in a year. Each child receiving a session would be recorded, by way of their digital identity, allowing the ECD service to show how the money is being used. The benefits for the renewable energy project is that it too can show the government how it has used the funds to support local communities in a systematic manner. This promotes transparency and accountability.

The Objective

This project seeks to enable REIPPs to easily and effectively channel funding into early learning services.

This mechanism will ensure that 500 children benefit from funded playgroup attendance within 12 months.

Outputs and Outcomes Outputs in progress

Timeframes

Outcomes

An innovative digital voucher mechanism for Socio-economic Development funding (from Renewable Energy Independent Power Producers) to sponsor local ECD programmes

June 2015 – June 2016

Increase in funding channeled into ECD through the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Programme (REIPPP)

Signed agreement in place to run a digital voucher scheme on behalf of an ECD Service Provider for a company that agrees to contribute socioeconomic development funding through this mechanism.

List of child beneficiaries who have been enrolled in the ID-IO blockchain record and have received digital vouchers

Children in the communities around Renewable Energy projects, such as solar and wind farms, live in some of the most remote and under-serviced locations in the country. These children can benefit from the companies who operate these projects, through the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Programme (REIPP).

20

The Innovation Edge | 1 July 2014 – 30 June 2015

4 - COMMISSIONING INNOVATION

4.5

DAPPS TO IMPROVE MONITORING OF PRESCHOOL ATTENDANCE AND AUTOMATE GOVERNMENT SUBSIDY CLAIMS

The need

20X

PER CAPITA MORE ON PRIMARY EDUCATION THAN WE DO ON EARLY LEARNING, WHERE THE RETURN ON INVESTMENT IS HIGHEST.

Registered preschools can receive R15 per child per day as a subsidy from government. To do this, the preschool needs to prove that the child is attending the school, which is hampered by an onerous registration system. Some children and preschools are not benefitting from these subsidies due to the inefficient system.

The Innovation

To efficiently record which children are using a preschool service, DApps would use a biometric measure, such as facial recognition. Staff at the preschool would take a picture of the child on their mobile phone, and DApps would correlate this with the child’s digital identity, verifying attendance. Being able to prove children’s attendance in this way, will reduce the administrative burden currently faced by practitioners and social workers administering the existing paper-based system and avoid delays in claims payments resulting from lost or inaccurate paperwork.

ONLY

15% OF YOUNG CHILDREN IN SA HAVE ACCESS TO AN EARLY LEARNING SUBSIDY

The Objective

To develop a Decentralised Application for monitoring pre-school attendance and automating government subsidy claims, which will be demonstrated at 10 sites.

Outputs and Outcomes Outputs in progress

Timeframes

Outcomes

Fully functioning mobile DApps to validate Pre-school Attendance, for ECD centres to claim government subsidies.

June 2015 – June 2016

Improved efficiency in the claims process for ECD subsidies, measured in terms of time spent on monthly claims by ECD practitioners and DSD staff

Application tested with at least one DSD service office and 10 ECD sites

SA SPENDS OVER

THE CURRENT CLAIMS PROCESS FOR THE SUBSIDY IS PAPERBASED AND CAN INCLUDE

UP TO 16

HANDOVERS PER ECD CENTRE PER MONTH

The Innovation Edge | 1 July 2014 – 30 June 2015

21

4 - COMMISSIONING INNOVATION

There is much anticipation every year around the publication of the matric (Grade 12) results in South Africa. These determine how well young South Africans have done as they leave school.

But matric outcomes are based in large part on the skills these young people developed (or didn’t develop) before they even started school

4.6

DEVELOPMENT OF AN EARLY LEARNING OUTCOMES MEASURE (ELOM)

The need

Research indicates that while children from better off homes make good progress following Grade R, a soon to be compulsory preschool grade, the poor do not and the gap between the two widens with age. Quality preschool programmes enable poor children to be ready to benefit from Grade R. However, South Africa currently lacks a reliable and valid instrument to assess how early learning programmes perform in preparing children for this level of education. South Africa needs a tool that can be used by trained and experienced ECD personnel, such as preschool teachers, to assess the attainment of Early Learning Development Standards -- defined as what children of particular ages and stages should know and be able to do -- in children entering Grade R.

The Innovation

The project team is developing an assessment tool that will enable evaluations of early learning programmes for children

The Objective

To build a valid and reliable assessment tool, the Early Learning Outcomes Measure, that is cost-effective and easy to administer; to pilot this tool and then validate it on a representative sample of children in the target age range so that the target standard for programme outcomes is based on what is achieved by an agreed percentage of children.

Outputs and Outcomes Outputs in progress

Timeframes

Outcomes

An assessment tool to measure the performance of early learning programmes (of any type) in preparing children for Grade R, against a set of early learning & development standards (ELDS)

January 2015 – September 2015

Improved quality of ECD programmes to increase the attainment of ELDS in children entering Grade R.

A training manual on the use of the tool A report on the piloting of the assessment tool Design and costing of a post-pilot age-validation process

The Team

• Linda Biersteker is a developmental psychologist and independent Early Childhood Development specialist.

• Andy Dawes is a clinical and developmental psychologist and an Associate Professor Emeritus in the Department of

22

prior to Grade R. The tool is the first of its kind in South Africa.

It can be administered by trained preschool teachers and the assessment takes roughly 40 minutes. It is not a school readiness test but rather will provide a measure of the extent to which populations of children, aged between 54 to 66 months, at the period of transition to Grade R achieve expected standards of knowledge and performance before starting Grade R. An Early Learning Development Standards (ELDS) approach will underpin the construction of the ELOM. ELDS are defined as what children of particular ages and stages should know and be able to do. Those used in the ELOM are based on relevant literature and policy documents, like the National Early Learning and Development Standards (NELDS), and in consultation with educators. The developmental domains the tool will cover include: Physical Development and Self Care; Social and Emotional Development; Approaches to Learning; Language and Literacy; Cognition; and Mathematics.

The Innovation Edge | 1 July 2014 – 30 June 2015

Psychology at the University of Cape Town.

• Elizabeth Girdwood focuses on early child-centered research and developmental interventions, consulting to, amongst others, Ilifa Labantwana and the Learning Trust.

4 - COMMISSIONING INNOVATION

ONLY

36%

OF GRADE 3 LEARNERS ACHIEVE MORE THAN

50%

IN STANDARD MATHS ASSESSMENTS

4.7

DEVELOPMENT OF AN INNOVATION FUND FOR ECD IN SOUTH AFRICA

The need

ECD services of varying quality are delivered by a large number of small informal private operators, community based organisations and non-profit organisations with little emphasis on outcomes. The development of a comprehensive and coordinated approach to ECD provision is a government priority with national and provincial support. The National Planning Commission has recommended the government provide resources to enable universal access to ECD, and government is seeking strategies to improve service coverage among underserved populations, like pregnant women and children. These challenges present an opportunity to create an innovative financing mechanism that enhances the quality and reach of ECD provision, and also attracts additional public and private sector funding into the sector.

The Innovation

The idea for introducing impact bonds in South Africa is supported by the use of social impact bonds globally, most of which are in operation in the UK and

USA. Impact bonds aim to improve the effectiveness of social interventions, including targeting health in pregnancy and proper nutrition, setting-up regular growth monitoring and immunisation, improving the parenting skills of caregivers and quality of pre-school education. They do so through establishing an outcomesbased contract where private investment is used to scale up interventions, especially early intervention and preventative services, implemented by specialised service providers. These private investors then receive repayments from an outcomes funder – usually a government or donor – only if independently verified evidence shows that the intervention has been successful in delivering the pre-agreed outcomes. Impact bonds can assist governments and donors in risk-free or riskmitigated exploration and expansion of effective early intervention and preventative programmes.

The Objective

This project aims to establish an Innovation Fund for ECD in South Africa and to implement a cost-effective measurement and evaluation system against which delivery models are evaluated for their effectiveness, allowing government and service providers to understand whether outcomes are achieved and the true costs of delivering impact.

SLOVAKIA

COLOMBIA

EARLY CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT IMPACT BONDS AROUND THE WORLD UTAH, CHICAGO + 30 OTHER CITIES: HEAD START USA: FAMILY NURSE PARTNERSHIPS INDIA: EDUCATE GIRLS

The Innovation Edge | 1 July 2014 – 30 June 2015

23

4 - COMMISSIONING INNOVATION Outcomes Funder (Government + matched funding)

In an Impact Bond, outcomes payments are made only for verified success, and its investorled active management approach drives rigorous data-driven performance management of services to ensure high quality.

5-10 M&E projects

Pregnant women and children 0-4 years

Provider

Provider

5-10 Providers

Provider

Intermediary/SPV

M&E Provider

Social Investment fund Technical Assistance 3 Impact Bonds

Outputs and Outcomes Outputs in progress

Timeframes

Outcomes

The development of an Impact Bond Innovation Fund (IBIF), which is focused on outcomes in the Early Childhood Development spectrum among lower income communities in the Western Cape

January 2015 – October 2015

State contracts with ECD service providers are set up to incentivise quality

A contract with the Western Cape Government to provide outcomes funding

Better short, medium and long term outcomes for beneficiaries

A cost effective M&E system against which delivery models can be evaluated for their effectiveness

The Team

The Bertha Centre for Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship was established in 2011 as the first academic centre in Africa dedicated to social innovation.

The Centre is working in partnership with Social Finance, a UK-based not-for-profit organization that provides a range of consulting, project management, strategic advice and financial advisory services.

• François Bonnici is the Founding Director of the Bertha Centre for Social Innovation.

• Aunnie Patton is a Fellow at both at the University

24

The Innovation Edge | 1 July 2014 – 30 June 2015

of Cape Town and the University of Oxford and the CoFounder of Insight Capital Partners.

• Susan de Witt is an MBA graduate of the UCT Graduate School of Business.

• Camilla Swart holds the ‘connector’ role at the Bertha Centre within the ‘Centre for Education Innovation’ hub for Southern Africa.

• Jane Newman and Jonny Gill are based at Social Finance (UK) and bring extensive international experience in impact investment.

4 - COMMISSIONING INNOVATION

4.8

NEUROSCIENCE RESEARCH TRANSLATION AND COMMUNICATION

The need

Neuroscience has fundamentally changed the way ECD is understood. There is a new appreciation of early childhood, especially the first 1,000 days of life, as a critically formative period of brain development. During this time ‘toxic stress’ -- stress that cannot be coped with, or can only be coped with at a significant cost -- is particularly damaging and leaves its mark for life. It can derail brain development, which leads to poor selfregulation.

Children raised in poverty are more susceptible to toxic stress. They are more liable to not cope psychologically and more likely to suffer physical organ damage and mental illness than their more affluent counterparts. In South Africa, as many as 58% of children younger than nine live in households with a monthly per capita income below the country’s accepted lower poverty line.

The effects of poverty are however not inevitable – they can be mediated by caregivers who give children the right care and support and through an eco-system

that values the role of caregivers. The challenge lies in finding ways of communicating powerful information from neuroscience to key target groups in a way that enables them to understand and act on this.

The Innovation

Project leader, Barak Morgan has identified the direct relevance and applicability of neuroscience to ECD in the context of South Africa, where children face high levels of socioeconomic adversity. Inspired by highly successful developmental neuroscience research translation programs in USA and Canada, he is developing novel approaches to conveying important messages to key stakeholder groups, for explaining brain development and the impacts of environmental and social stress.

These approaches are designed to be more handson for players than simply listening to a presentation or reading a paper about brain development.

The Objective

To translate the neuroscience of ECD into the simplest possible language that ‘the person in the street’ (including policy-makers) can understand and internalise in ways that change ECD policy and practice for the better. And to do so in a way that does not compromise scientific accuracy.

Outputs and Outcomes Outputs in progress

Timeframes

Outcomes

Appropriate and effective metaphors for communication of key messages on early brain development to parents and caregivers

June 2015 – December 2015

Improved understanding amongst key stakeholders of the ways in which early childhood experiences shape the developing brain, and increased awareness of the lifelong implications of this

The development of an experiential ‘brain game’ targeted at policy makers and allowing players to see how a brain is constructed and how sensitive it is to environmental and social influences

The Team

Barak Morgan is a biologist and medical doctor with clinical experience mostly in psychiatry. He is a Research Associate at the MRC Medical Imaging

Research Unit, Department of Human Biology, in Cape Town. He works as a researcher in human social – cognitive – affective neuroscience.

The Innovation Edge | 1 July 2014 – 30 June 2015

25

4 - COMMISSIONING INNOVATION

This project was a response to the Innovation Edge challenge transforming waiting places into engaging spaces!

4.9

SIFUNDA NGOKUTHETHA – LANGUAGE IN THE SUPERMARKET AND CLINIC

The need

Strong language and communication skills are essential for children to succeed. Children who develop strong language and communication skills are more likely to start school ready to learn. They are less likely to have difficulties when it comes to reading and are more likely to have higher levels of achievement in school. When caregivers talk with children it expands their vocabulary and gives them an idea of how to use certain words.

Caregivers in high poverty and high stress environments are less likely to engage in the types of interactions that promote this type of language development.

The Innovation

Inspired by a soon to be published study by U.S. researchers, which shows that signs placed in supermarkets serving low-income populations have a significant impact on adult-child conversations, the project team has developed a low-cost, scalable

intervention to get caregivers and children talking. With the help of award-winning illustrator Xanelé Puren, the project team has designed a set of eye-catching signs that prompt caregivers to ask their children questions in different sections of the supermarket. The first signs, with text in isiXhosa, are up at the Boxer Superstore in Duncan Village, East London, along with signage explaining the project to adults at the store entrance.

The open-ended nature of the questions encourages a back-and-forth dialogue between caregivers and children. Signage will change regularly to prompt fresh engagement across repeated visits. Signs will also be designed and placed at health clinics, effectively turning ‘everyday places’ into ‘engaging spaces.’

The Objective

The project aims to introduce a low-cost, sustainable, scalable intervention that promotes brain-building, bonding and language-building interactions between caregivers and children in everyday environments.

Outputs and Outcomes Outputs in progress

Timeframes

Outcomes

Signage created and installed at minimum of one supermarket and two clinic sites

April 2015 – March 2016

Improved brain-building, bonding and language-building interactions between caregivers and children in everyday environments

Evaluation of the impact on caregiver-child interactions of the placement of interactionstimulating signage in supermarkets and waiting areas

The Team

South Africa Partners builds mutually beneficial partnerships between the United States and South Africa in the areas of health and education.

Masibumbane Development Organisation works to empower underserved and disadvantaged communities to realise their fundamental human rights in a democratic South Africa

26

The Innovation Edge | 1 July 2014 – 30 June 2015

• Mpho Plaatjie is the Education Programme Officer at Masibumbane Development Organisation in East London.

• Aletta Ngangani is Office Coordinator at Masibumbane Development Organisation.

• Carol Jackson Cashion is the Education Program Director at SA Partners in Boston, Massachusetts.

4 - COMMISSIONING INNOVATION

4.10 UKONGA - STOKVELS FOR ECD The need

Primary caregivers are the most important and influential role-players in their children’s development. They are often told what to do in the best interests of their children, hearing things like ‘take your child for vaccinations’, or ‘take your child to school’, but do not always have a meaningful understanding of why these actions are so important.

To improve early childhood stimulation, which is vital for brain development, there is a need to strengthen caregivers’ understanding of, demand for, and participation in ECD services. Caregivers need to be equipped with an understanding of the value and importance of ECD as well as the skills and confidence to support the development of their children in practical ways. Equipping caregivers with practical tools they can use at home to stimulate young children will mean they are no longer only consumers, but become providers of ECD services.

The Innovation

South Africans have a long history of participating in stokvels (shared savings clubs). They are very popular: there are over

800,000 in the country with approximately 11.4 million members. Stokvels are prime places to engage caregivers about ECD, providing a valuable existing social capital platform. Various commercial models have been successfully used to leverage stokvels. Brand ambassadors use them to develop brand loyalty by providing product demonstrations and information at monthly meetings, for example. This model can be adapted to communicate ECD messaging and offer practical information to caregivers.

The project team will train and deploy community-based ECD ‘Champions’ to champion ECD at regular savings group meetings. Their monthly inputs will be designed around the concept of ‘just one thing’ to do with your child this month, and will demonstrate the importance of early stimulation and be accompanied by simple practical resources that can be used in the home. The project pilot will create five monthly inputs delivered to 720 primary caregivers at 48 savings groups in the Eastern Cape and Gauteng, allowing for comparison across different urban and rural contexts.

The Objective

The aim is to use the stokvel network to empower caregivers to understand and act on the importance of early stimulation so that they support their children’s early learning and consistently access early learning services.

THERE ARE OVER

800,000

STOKVELS

IN SA

11,4

MILLION PEOPLE PARTICIPATE IN THESE STOKVELS

Outputs and Outcomes Outputs in progress

Timeframes

Outcomes

Design and deliver a series of five monthly inputs (accompanied by simple, practical resources) to 720 primary caregivers in 48 savings groups through their monthly meetings to demonstrate the importance of early stimulation and the role caregivers can play.

June 2015 – June 2016

Primary caregivers actively support their children’s early learning

Evaluation report on knowledge and attitude change post intervention

The Team

The Ubunye Foundation is an Eastern Cape development trust dedicated to unlocking the potential of rural communities through an integrated community development approach. Expressive Through the Line is a marketing agency that since its inception in 1998 has been involved in organising promotions in over 3000 stores countrywide.

Primary caregivers access early learning services for their children regularly and consistently

Its activations include In-store Activations, Brand Ambassadors, Stokvel Promotions, and Roadshows. Clients include Unilever, Shoprite, Pioneer Foods and Rapidol.

• Lucy O’Keeffe is the Director of the Ubunye Foundation.

• Mpume Shange has been running her marketing business, Expressive Through the Line, for 17 years.

STOKVELS ARE ESTIMATED TO INVEST

OVER R44 BILLION

ANNUALLY

The Innovation Edge | 1 July 2014 – 30 June 2015

27

4 - COMMISSIONING INNOVATION

All ECD centres (preschools and creches) are required by law to be registered with the Department of Social Development.

They are only able to access a government early learning subsidy if they are registered.

Our project has helped reduce registration time from over 12 months to less than three.

Registration numbers at the two pilot sites have increased from an average of 5 ECD centres per annum to over 30 centres in three months.

28

4.11

WORKFLOW BOARDS TO IMPROVE ECD SYSTEMS EFFICIENCY

The need

All ± 40,000 ECD centres in South Africa must be registered with the Department of Social Development (DSD) to ensure that young children get the necessary care, protection and stimulation and so that these centres can access government funding. The current registration system is inefficient and unable to address the backlog in registration, or keep up with increasing demand.

Key challenges in the current registration system include challenges related to planning, procurement, technology, infrastructure, human resources, budgeting, information management and operations. There is evidently a need to make the registration system more efficient.

The Innovation

Workflow boards offer a simple way to identify blockages in a system. The team was inspired by how workflow boards are used in the private sector to improve efficiency. By breaking the DSD’s registration process for ECD centres down into individual steps, and assessing how far along the registration process individual centres are, the project team can discover where the main challenges for registering ECD centres lie.

Outputs and Outcomes Outputs in progress

Timeframes

Outcomes

Factory workflow boards installed at two social development service offices in KwaZulu Natal, to quantify the demand on the registration system and to engage social workers and other relevant stakeholders around key constraints

November 2014 – July 2015

A simple and costeffective solution to systemic challenges that currently prevent all ECD services from being registered and therefore become eligible for financial and other support.

Support from DSD for expansion of the project beyond pilot sites Development of a manual to support project implementation in all DSD service offices in selected districts

The team introduced training, simple checklists, improved filing systems and mini jamborees to enable the efficient processing of multiple ECD site registration applications simultaneously. The process identified over 500 ECD sites in one disrtict, double the number previously known to the Department. In each of the two participating service offices the number of sites being registered increased dramatically: from five per annum to over 30 within two months of initiating the project. And the turnaround time for particular steps within the process has been reduced dramatically, in some cases by several months, through improved systems efficiency.

Integrating with this project, the team at 9Needs (the DApps project outlined on page 18) will design an application to digitise and improve the ECD centre registration system.

The Innovation Edge | 1 July 2014 – 30 June 2015

The Objective

To address inefficiencies within ECD registration systems through the use of factory-style workflow boards within Department of Social Development service offices in selected districts.

The Team

The Network Action Group is a network of rural community based organisations in UGU district, KwaZulu Natal.

• Brian Liggett is the Director of the Network Action Group.

• Mlondi Vilakazi and Xoliswa Majola are associates at the Network Action Group.

• Zola Songo leads the site identification and data verification.

• Neville Meyer is a longtime community worker who is documenting the lessons learned from the workflow boards project.

4 - COMMISSIONING INNOVATION

UGU SOCIAL WORKER: THE WORKFLOW BOARDS ARE LIKE THERAPY FOR US - FOR THE FIRST TIME, WE CAN SEE THE BIGGER PICTURE.

The Innovation Edge | 1 July 2014 – 30 June 2015

29

T

5 - COMMUNICATING INNOVATION

Communication is key to innovation The third pillar of the Innovation Edge involves communication for innovation, to enable lessons from innovations and from analysis of innovation processes to be widely shared in ways that can inform early learning policy and practice. This is an area we intend to grow over the next year as our portfolio of projects matures and lessons emerge.

The Innovation Edge disseminates innovation insights and lessons on a range of Internet and general media communication platforms:

• We have an active website which showcases our current project portfolio. The project pages contain a blogging element where teams can share their journey of developing and testing the innovation. We aim to create a community around each innovation by attracting local and international thought-leaders in the respective fields to participate and share their own experience and research.

30

The Innovation Edge | 1 July 2014 – 30 June 2015

• Our electronic newsletter reaches over 1200 subscribers every two months. The newsletters include information on new projects that we’ve funded, events that we’re hosting or participating in and any new competitions and challenges.

• Innovation Edge also makes use of social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, to promote the work of the fund and also attract interest and applications from a wider pool of innovators. These communication activities support our longer-term objectives of increasing public awareness of the importance of early learning and the need for a more progressive approach to addressing the associated challenges.

• The Edge has been featured in a range of media including News24, VentureBurn, SABC and Community Radio, the New Age, Business Day and the Cape Times.

5 - COMMUNICATING INNOVATION

Attending local and international conferences is key to stretching out and building new bridges for collaboration. In April 2015, we attended an international meeting on Impact Funding for Early Childhood Development, organised by the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution and hosted by the LEGO Foundation in Billund, Denmark. South Africa featured on the agenda with presentations from the Bertha Centre on their work to develop and test a social impact bond for ECD in South Africa, the project that is being co-funded by the Innovation Edge.

The Lego Idea conference that followed provided excellent opportunities for networking and opened up global channels for collaboration.

We also attended and presented at the Salzburg Global Seminar on Early Childhood Development and Education, which brought together ECD thinkers from various parts of

the world to formulate a statement around the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which follow from the Millenium Development Goals, expiring this year. The SDGs include language on early childhood development programs and policies, which for the first time go beyond infant and maternal mortality. The seminar recognised that in the 2015-2030 period the challenge, across high-, middle- and low-income countries alike, will be to implement ECD policies and programmes with quality at scale.

Closer to home, the Innovation Edge has been involved in a number of local events – including the national South African Innovation Summit and the Trialogue CSI conference, which provided opportunities for sharing information on the ideas that we are currently exploring as well as our approach to innovating for early learning.

Interestingly, the Innovation Edge platform in and of itself has generated a lot of interest as a mechanism for addressing social challenges.

Open innovation is essential for social change, and communication is critical to open innovation

Got a smart idea for early learning?

Apply for funding for your project

www.innovationedge.org.za The Innovation Edge | 1 July 2014 – 30 June 2015

31

6 - NOTES

The Innovation Edge is a project of Ilifa Labantwana and is supported by:

32

The Innovation Edge | 1 July 2014 – 30 June 2015

sonja@innovationedge.org.za

+27 21 670 9854

+27 21 670 9850

DG Murray Trust House, 1 Wodin Road, Claremont

SUPPORTING innovators to build new partnerships with stakeholders who add value.

FUNDING of up to R 1 000 000 each to selected innovation partners, over a period of up to 24 months.

ASSISTING with project monitoring and evaluation.

SHARING THE LESSONS from grant funded projects and from analysis of innovation processes.

CONNECTING SUCCESSFUL implementing partners with social investors and other interested parties who are in a position to support or facilitate scale up.

BRINGING TOGETHER THINKERS and innovators with diverse interests and expertise to contribute to the development of innovations in early learning.

WWW.GAPDESIGN.CO.ZA

This includes:

The Edge offers a continuum of support, depending on the stage of development of the innovation and the needs of the innovation partner.

ENABLING and supporting innovators to move creative ideas through the innovation process.

Concept & Design by GAPdesign

What support do we provide?

The Innovation Edge is committed to creating an environment in which innovation flourishes. We support organisations and individuals to identify, nurture and share innovative and scalable ideas that enhance early learning.

Got an idea?

Get in touch with us