Building coalitions: The power of synergy

HANDS-ON Experience Learning

BUILDING COALITIONS

BUILDING COALITIONS: THE POWER OF SYNERGY

Apartheid’s legacy continues to divide us in deep and undeniable ways, but civil society coalitions across class, race and economic sectors can inspire new ways of accelerating change. This learning brief explores communications and advocacy campaigns that demonstrate the power of coalitions to effect transformation. It includes case studies of: Messages for Mothers (M4M), Youth Capital’s Part of the Action and Real Reform for ECD (also known as Real Reform).

There is a growing gap between the pace of innovation and the ability of governments and civil society to harness it for the public good. Its monetisation has concentrated global wealth and widened the gap between the top 10% and the rest of the world’s population. The pace of innovation continues to accelerate,1 largely due to the instant synergistic power of advanced technologies such as the Internet, 5G and big data analysis.2 Government and civil society must be at the forefront of ensuring that the energy and power of this knowledge capital is harnessed for broad societal benefit, but that can’t be done at a snail’s pace and in the same old ways. The speed of compound innovation – and its desirable and undesirable social impacts – requires rapid synthesis and adaptation of technology as well as changes in human behaviour.

1

https://www.kurzweilai.net/ the-law-of-accelerating-return

2 Canning,

https://www2.deloitte. com/content/dam/Deloitte/br/Documents/public-sector/Deloitte-Future-ofgovernment.pdf

While in the past many civil society organisations (CSOs) made great strides by putting their heads down and staying singularly focused on addressing the need at hand, their ability to influence broader social change now largely depends on their connectedness. Within this context, the power of synergy comes from the:

› creative energy that sparks from unlikely networks;3

› the superlinear scaling properties of social networks –each time a social network doubles in size, the number of connections increases roughly fourfold;4 and

› the influence of bottom-up “political” constituencies in shaping public demand for change.5

Drive public innovation by reigniting civil society

Kurzweil, R. 2001. The law of accelerating returns.

M. et al. 2020. Creating the government of the future: uncovering the building blocks of change to become more anticipatory, human-centered, and resilient. Deloitte Center for Government Insights.

3 Krishna, A. 2002. Active social capital: tracing the roots of development and democracy. New York: Columbia University Press.

4 West, G. 2017. Scale: the universal laws of life, growth and death in organisms, cities and companies. New York: Penguin Books, p. 317.

5 Acemoglu, D. and Robinson, J. 2012. Why nations fail: the origins of power, prosperity and poverty. New York: Crown.

Civil society coalitions may emerge organically for a variety of reasons:

› to make the most of limited resources and to pool the expertise available to CSOs working on similar objectives;

› to avoid duplication of effort;

› to ensure effective communication among key CSO actors; and

› to avoid disunity on an issue.6

Working in coalition also provides a coordinated way for CSOs to forge and maintain strategic partnerships with external actors. It is easier for governments to relate to a coalition as a single partner representing a range of civil society organisations than to work out whom to interact with from a range of players.7

The power of coalitions is clearly illustrated by civil society’s prompt response to the Covid-19 pandemic in South Africa.

CASE STUDY #1 MESSAGES FOR MOTHERS

A unique collaboration between South African CSOs and government was one of the first in the world to create a Covid-19 information platform for pregnant women during the pandemic. Messages for Mothers (M4M) was launched to provide credible information to mothers about the coronavirus and the impact on their families.

As the pandemic tightened its hold on South Africa in March 2020, Julie Mentor – leader of Embrace, a national movement for supported and celebrated motherhood – realised there was a dearth of reliable Covid-19 information for mothers. She consulted Dr Simone Honikman, director of the Perinatal Mental Health Project (PMHP), Dr Kopano Matlwa Mabaso, executive director of Grow Great – a campaign that aims to galvanise South Africa towards a national commitment to zero stunting by 2030, as well as Buhle Mabaso, campaign manager for Side-by-Side, a National Department of Health (NDOH) campaign for pregnant women and caregivers aimed at ensuring children under five receive nurturing care. At the time, all agreed there was urgent need for a dedicated maternal response that tapped into the most qualified maternal, physical and mental health experts in the country.

Very soon, M4M was born, and the four women became the executive team, providing strategic direction to the initiative and pouring their complementary skills, available capacity and resources into the project. All content was open-source and

Diverse groups came together to reduce the risk of new infections, help feed millions of hungry people during the hard lockdown, lead advocacy work for the reduction of alcoholrelated harms and support for foreign nationals and migrants, among other initiatives.8

Arguably, in a resource-constrained environment, new synergy is the most likely source of accelerated change over the next decade. The challenge for civil society (and for governments and multilateral institutions) is to move beyond collective talk to convergent action.

unbranded to ensure information was accessible and easy to share. This information was made available across a range of channels, such as: NDOH platforms, including the Covid-19 WhatsApp line; community radio stations; the M4M website; the M4M newsletter (sent to 2 700 organisations working with caregivers and mothers); and pamphlets distributed in the Western Cape.

“Something about M4M appealed to moms of different races and different economic backgrounds, which as a national programme, you always hope for but don’t always get quite right.”

Dr Kopano Matlwa Mabaso, executive director, Grow Great

CASE STUDY #2

YOUTH CAPITAL’S PART OF THE ACTION

Nearly two-thirds of South Africa’s youth are unemployed. Youth Capital advocates for youth-centred and evidencebased solutions to deal with youth unemployment.9 In 2020, it launched an Action Plan that prioritises 10 key levers to address youth unemployment. These 10 levers connect young people’s lived experience of unemployment with available quantitative and qualitative data about the barriers to finding employment.

In 2021, Youth Capital consolidated the main learnings from two years of youth-centred campaigning and concluded that despite many stakeholders in government, the private sector and civil society investing resources to address youth unemployment, their efforts were too fragmented to make a big difference. It became evident that South Africa lacked a unifying strategy to tackle the problem. “No single organisation can tackle all 10 points in isolation, let alone the government. We are calling on individuals and the sector to be Part of the Action,” explains Kristal Duncan-Williams, project lead, Youth Capital. To date, 70 organisations have signed up, rallying around one or more levers in the Action Plan which resonate with their area of expertise.

9 Odayar, L. 2022, Forging the leaders of tomorrow amid South Africa’s youth unemployment crisis. The African, 10 August. https://theafrican.co.za/politics/ forging-tomorrows-leaders-amid-sas-youth-unemployment-crisis-f63154124c80-41d9-97fb-7a975a9c4705/

Figure 1: Youth Capital’s Action Plan covers the entire journey of a young person from places of learning into places of earning

CASE STUDY #3

REAL REFORM FOR ECD

Real Reform for ECD is a broad-based alliance advocating for holistic, well-funded, inclusive and quality early childhood development services. Of the approximately 7 million children10 aged 0–5, just over 4 million receive the child support grant11 and 626 574 benefit from subsidised early learning.12 Real Reform was launched in August 2020 in response to the tabling of the Children's Amendment Bill,13 a draft piece of legislation aimed at strengthening protective measures for children. The Equality Collective14 acts as the secretariat of the coalition supported by more than 200 organisations, with elected representatives forming a steering committee to lead Real Reform’s work.

Real Reform aims to organise a strong base of ECD practitioners that will spearhead its advocacy campaigns at grassroots level.

Tshepo Mantje of the Equality Collective explains: “Real Reform is developing a strong network of ECD practitioners who are active participants in advocating for holistic access to ECD services for all children. Additionally, we aim to create sustainable collaborative relationships between ECD practitioners and local government, noting the role of local government in the provision and expansion of ECD services (as mandated by the Constitution15).”

10

11 Ibid.

12

13 The Children’s Amendment Bill (B18-2020) proposed amendments in relation to a wide range of issues impacting on children, including amendments regarding partial care and ECD. The Bill did not address reforms needed for strengthening the ECD sector. It had the potential to create additional burdens and challenges for ECD providers.

14 The Equality Collective is an activist and community-centred law project based in the rural Eastern Cape. It believes that building collective power and constructive advocacy can transform systems and build a more equal South Africa.

15 Schedule 4, Part B of the Constitution of South Africa.

Hall, K. 2022. Children in South Africa. Children Count, Children’s Institute, University of Cape Town. https://tinyurl.com/53f4scnn

Department of Social Development. 2020. Social Development sets up workstreams to conduct risk assessment and state of readiness for the early childhood development (ECD) centres. Media statement, 5 June. https://tinyurl. com/e4hwhbvw

Figure 2: Real Reform has proposed five changes to bring about access to well-funded, inclusive and quality early childhood development services for all children

COALITION MILESTONES

REAL REFORM FOR ECD

Although it is not always easy to measure the impact of communications and advocacy campaigns, it is possible to trace the connection between campaign outputs and specific outcomes.

Below are examples of positive outcomes related to specific coalition outputs:

Messages for Mothers

Moms felt supported by M4M because the messages had an empathetic quality engendering connection and care, rather than panic and fear. Nomalizo Jaxa, a mother from Dunoon in the Western Cape, received the messages through a WhatsApp support group. She said they had built her up and helped her emotionally through a difficult period. The alliance also contributed to numerous radio and TV interviews and an international webinar, focusing on mental health responses to Covid-19 in Africa. 16

Youth Capital’s Part of the Action

Under the “Certify Us” lever, Youth Capital connected Ukhanyo Foundation17 – a small NGO in Philippi, Cape Town, which supports young people rewriting matric – to Dr Sandy Malapile, director of the Second Chance Matric programme at the Department of Basic Education.18 Youth Capital also teamed up with Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator,19 to create a Second Chance Matric hub on SAYouth.mobi, a zero-rated website.

Real Reform for ECD

In March 2021, the Portfolio Committee on Social Development issued a statement announcing its decision to reject the proposed amendments that relate to ECD in the Children’s Amendment Bill. A technical team was later established to ensure that the amendments to the Second Children’s Amendment Bill were more appropriate for the ECD sector, and thanks to the coalition’s lobbying, Real Reform has a presence on the technical committee. This is a clear example of the potential of advocacy to influence legislation.

The power of lobbying

In response to Real Reform’s call to reject the ECDrelated provisions of the Children’s Amendment Bill, over 1 200 submissions were made to Parliament in November 2020 across seven provinces, with 90% of those submissions coming from ECD practitioners. These submissions were largely attributed to the mobilisation work of the coalition.

Civil society organisations can benefit from the following five lessons shared by the coalition case studies in this learning brief.

Top coalition lessons

1. Have a clear ask

2. The moment matters

3. Break free of silos

4. A bird’s-eye view makes a difference

5. Adapt as you go

1 HAVE A CLEAR ASK

“Being clear about what we wanted to do, how we wanted to do it and having practical next steps was important in getting organisations to make the time to meet with us and other stakeholders around particular points. If there are no practical steps and no clear end goal, coalitions that start strong can peter out over time as people’s priorities shift.”

Kristal Duncan-Williams, project lead, Youth Capital

To have an engaged coalition, it is important to set realistic objectives and a clear implementation plan. The value of having a coherent plan is that organisations can easily understand where they fit in and how best they can contribute. For instance, the Youth Capital team explain that their action plan is not a nebulous agreement to address youth unemployment. Instead, it consists of 10 points laid out in clear, simple language that organisations can get behind.

Similarly, Real Reform advocates for five key changes to strengthen the ECD sector, and there is a simple “call to action” button on the coalition’s website inviting people to make their voices heard.

M4M asked their partners to provide easily accessible and digestible Covid-19 information, verified by experts, to pregnant women and mothers.

17 Available at: https://www.ukhanyofoundation.org/

18 The aim of the Second Chance Matric Programme is to provide support to learners who have not been able to meet the requirements of the National Senior Certificate (NSC) or the extended Senior Certificate (SC).

19 Available at: https://www.harambee.co.za/

16 Ayuso, J.L., Honikman, S. and Chibanda, D. Mental health aspects of the Covid-19 crisis in Africa. Alan J Flisher Centre for Public Mental Health and AMAR, 14 April 2020. https://www.cpmh.org.za/mental-health-aspects-of-the-covid-19crisis-in-africa/

Successful coalitions are often born out of a confluence of circumstances that occur at a particular moment. Traditionally, coalitions take months to establish because of multiple meetings aimed at finalising a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) around roles, responsibilities, resources, accountability, etc. The pressing nature of the pandemic meant there was no time to spare on administrative procedures – M4M had to seize the moment and hit the ground running. In April 2020, less than two weeks after initial consultations, M4M was helping mothers. This was largely due to the high level of trust and adaptability demonstrated by the partners involved, who bypassed timeconsuming administrative tasks and worked remotely to keep the momentum going when successive levels of lockdown came into effect.

In the case of Real Reform for ECD, the moment was hastened by the impending threat of constraining and ineffective legislation.

NGOs are usually short-staffed. With programmatic interventions, staff are often so focussed on delivering a reading programme, or conducting HIV testing, that they do not have time to reflect on their experience. They may write a report for funders, but this is not always shared. Youth Capital can help partner organisations break free of their silos by sparking collective connectedness.

Youth Capital regularly shares qualitative and quantitative data with coalition partners, some of which are small organisations that do not have the resources to carry out such research on their own. For instance, Youth Capital commissioned a review of government’s Second Chance Matric Programme, which has been used by Philippi-based organisation, Ukhanyo Foundation, at a district level to build support for their own work.

“Real Reform has achieved so much in two years – way more than one organisation could have achieved working alone. Through a coalition we are able to leverage far-reaching networks and collaboratively find solutions on issues.”

A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW MAKES A DIFFERENCE

Activism sparks a coalition

Pandemic conditions initiated ECD activism, which influenced Covid-19 relief grants and legislation, and ultimately the formation of the ECD coalition. Kayin Scholtz, chair of the Real Reform steering committee, says the coalition was born on the back of the success of the Save Our ECD Workforce campaign, which mobilised more than 4 500 ECD practitioners to come out in support of over 350 pickets across all nine provinces in South Africa. More than 12 000 people signed the petition and over 2 000 social media posts with the hashtag #SaveOurECDWorkforce reached more than half a million people. He says: “We believe we influenced the allocation of the R497 million directed to the ECD Economic Stimulus Relief Fund.”

When organisations sign up to be Part of the Action, they are required to share which areas of youth development they are working in. This action filters for aligned missions and gives Youth Capital a bird’s-eye view of youth organisations and their focus areas. When a topic comes up that is relevant to a particular point in the Action Plan, Youth Capital can easily bring relevant organisations and stakeholders together.

“The Action Plan is like having ‘Google maps’ in your ear. No matter what happens we can always come back to the map and ask: ‘Are we on course, is this what we said we were going to do?’” explains Duncan-Williams.

Crucially, Youth Capital knows which development organisations and government departments to canvas around a particular issue. Whether it be the cost of jobseeking, or the challenges associated with rewriting matric, Youth Capital is in a strong position to bring the right stakeholders to the table.

Tshepo Mantje, Equality Collective

in reality, coalitions often lose momentum because members’ individual projects take priority. A driving force is needed to keep the partnership on track, such as a steering committee or a single organisation responsible for coordinating the action.

Mantje, of the Equality Collective, stresses that it is important to establish clear roles and responsibilities, and to track action items assigned to coalition members. All of these factors depend on open and strong communication channels to ensure that coalition members are clear on what is expected of them.

2

PULLING DIFFERENT STRENGTHS INTO THE COALITION

M4M had to adapt rapidly and respond to an ever-changing pandemic. There was no time for developing a perfect plan. As new evidence came to light, the team had to be quick on their feet, updating messages – sometimes there were several revisions a day. Each partner contributed what they could, when they could, while working from home. Mentor explains: “We had to move quickly and trust each other. There was empathy and understanding with regards to childcare and maintaining a work–life balance. A lot of initial decisions were made during WhatsApp conversations.”

COALITION CHALLENGES

Coalitions tend to have a louder voice and greater reach, enabling them to make significant gains. However, they do struggle to maintain momentum; constrained by limited time, resources and bureaucracy. These are some of the main challenges to consider when forming a coalition:

5 1

Coalition members recognise the value of collaboration and agree voluntarily to give their time to the coalition. However,

It is important to partner with organisations that are missionaligned, but also to ensure that they can bring something different to the table. Real Reform deliberately ensured diversity in its steering committee, with representatives from ECD forums, NGOs, legal organisations, a funder (DGMT), and a policy-focused organisation (Ilifa Labantwana).

Another critical point is that coalitions need actors who have influence. Influence can be in the form of one’s ability to mobilise a large membership, the ability to influence policymakers or the ability to engage the media. Scholtz warns: “When coalitions do not have members who can generate influence, you are in danger of setting yourself up to fail.”

As an advocacy organisation, Youth Capital brings experienced government lobbying and research to the table but relies on partners with on-the-ground experience to drive the Action Plan. When pairing research with community-specific experience, Youth Capital can make a much stronger case to the government.

A missing piece of the puzzle for Youth Capital is extending the network beyond the civil society space. It is trying to make inroads into the private sector as that partnership could help address challenges that inhibit employment for young people. “I think including the demand-side is the missing piece in a lot of youth development work,” says Duncan-Williams.

“Sometimes it might be an unlikely partnership: people who have never met each other but who are actually working toward a common goal. Our role is to act as a coordinator of organisations doing the work.”

Kristal Duncan-Williams, project lead, Youth Capital

FINDING THE RIGHT RESOURCES 3

Coalitions have been described as a “necessary bureaucracy” and every coalition an NGO joins brings with it another set of communications, another email list and another set of conference calls and meetings.20 While collaborative problemsolving has been welcomed by many partners, it does stretch individual and collective resources.

Bridget Hannah, an Innovation Director at DGMT, points out that meaningful collaboration requires having a dedicated person who spends time understanding the problem to contribute effectively to solutions. A key issue with collaborative problemsolving in a new venture or advocacy campaign is that often one is not sure what type of expertise should be brought in at the onset.

EFFECTIVE COALITIONS

Coalitions bring together organisations that are on a similar mission or have similar values, with complementary resources, a clear ask, defined goals and a structured path to implementation. Perhaps the most imperative requirement is a sustainable driving force to keep the coalition on track and moving forward.

This

Learning brief developed by Daniella Horwitz with contributions from Messages for Mothers, Youth Capital and Real Reform for ECD, edited by Rahima Essop.

20 Moyes, R. and Nash, T. 2011. Global coalitions: an introduction to working in international civil society partnerships. Action on Armed Violence. https://article36. org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Global_Coalitions_published_Dec_2011.pdf

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