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).”

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11 Ibid.

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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.

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/

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.

“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.” 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.

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