The South Africa Grant Fund awards grants to South African NGO’s providing education, employment and entrepreneurship programs for disadvantaged women and youth.
Grant candidates undergo a rigorous selection process that includes proposal review, financial reviews, interviews and site visits in South Africa.
Grant categories:
- Educational support for AIDS orphans and child-heads of household
- General educational enrichment (computer skills, tutoring, life skills)
- College prep and career guidance
- Entrepreneurship and micro-enterprise
- Job training and placement
Meet the 2008 Grantees
Ashoka Youth Ventures – South Africa: PPF will fund Ashoka Youth Ventures’ Dream It Do It Workshops which provide training, skills and moral support for young leaders to excel as budding Social Entrepreneurs. The training creates a safe space where 100 young people from different racial and class backgrounds across South Africa can devise solutions to problems facing their communities and schools. The program helps youth transform their life experience from one of alienation and disengagement to one of initiative, commitment, and capability. Through YV, young people also develop a set of business and life skills that will improve their likelihood of success in school, university, career and life.
 |
 |
Basadi Pele Foundation’s Early Childhood Development (ECD) Project will improve teacher quality in township day care centers and train daycare owners in management and entrepreneurship skills. PPF will fund production of government-accredited curriculum materials that will serve at least 150 women in three years. Women will be drawn from six different townships to Basadi’s training centers. This course provides a means for formal recognition of women who are already practicing in the field without formal qualifications – and for women who want to enter the field. It also provides further professional development for experienced practitioners with limited or difficult access to career development opportunities.
 |
 |
Girls’Net will train 14 girls from Orange Farm, Johannesburg in computer skills, writing skills, and “digital story-telling.” The training will also include modules on children’s rights, gender empowerment and field trips to enrich the girls’ understanding of math, science and technology.
 |
 |
IkamvaYouth prepares disadvantaged high school students for personal and academic success through career guidance, mentoring, college prep courses and personal counseling. Each Ikamva student is enrolled in college or technical school upon graduation or they enter the workforce. The programs also aim to address some of South Africa’s biggest problems: the low skills base, lack of black students in higher education, unemployment, lack of black professionals, brain drain, poverty and youth turning to crime. PPF’s funding will provide college counseling, mentoring, and career guidance for 60 students in Grades 10 – 12.
 |
 |
 |
Mosaic’s Enterprise Development Project will teach income generating skills to 20 poverty-stricken women who are single heads of households exposed to constant domestic violence. Over 11 weeks, the women will be trained in government-accredited courses in cooking and baking for employment at hotels, restaurants, guest houses, coffee shops, and other businesses. Additional training in business skills, assertiveness, and permaculture gardening is provided. The gardening enables the women to grow and sell their own food, ensuring food security and improved nutrition for the women and their children. Women who successfully complete the project receive job placement or resources to start their own micro-enterprise.
 |
 |
 |
The Sonqoba Vegetable Garden addresses poverty and hunger in the Katlehong township of Johannesburg. Measuring some 60,653 square feet, Sonqoba Garden provides food for the Sonqoba Primary School students, staff and community. It also generates income through produce sales. Its goals are to facilitate agricultural training; encourage entrepreneurship among disadvantaged black women; employ women in the community; and promote a healthy lifestyle by providing healthy, natural food grown in the township. The garden currently employs twelve elderly women. Through PPF it will train and employ an additional 12 women.
 |
