South Africa’s Top Social Innovators Vie for a Coveted Impumelelo 2010 Sustainability Award!

Click here to view the programme for the Final Adjudications.

For more information contact:
Candice Jansen
Impumelelo Media Liaison Officer
candice at impumelelo dot org dot za
083 453 9647 / 021 424 6360

In the first half of 2009 there have been more public service delivery protests than in any other previous year.

Why?

This is what the Impumelelo Innovations Award Trust, having unearthed more than 268 answers to South Africa’s service delivery questions, is asking, when home-grown solutions do exist.

According to Municipal IQ’s Municipal Hotspots Monitor, these protests account for almost a quarter of all protests since 1994!

How is it possible that more than 2000 households in Kuyasa, in Khayelitsha, Cape Town have been successfully retrofitted with solar water heaters, amongst other energy efficient low-cost housing interventions, when many housing settlements have been recently lambasted for their poor construction?

Quality rural education for farming communities and training for rural teachers need no longer be an enigma. Ask the Hantam Community Education Trust in Colesburg in the Karoo. They have changed the lives of more than 800 children and young people, offering them an opportunity for further study in city centres.

The Praekelt Foundation has innovatively used mobile technology to get young people to test for HIV and adhere to treatment if tested positive. They are training health staff at hospitals in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng to utilise the free ‘Please Call Me’ messaging service for this mission.

The eThekwini Municipality in Durban is currently demonstrating the enormous tool landfills are for generating income for municipalities, employment, electricity, education on biodiversity, and recreation! The Marianhill and Bisasar Road landfill sites are demonstrating this. In addition to subverting traditional waste management conventions, they are currently succesfully extracting methane gas to generate electricity.

Around the country, pockets of excellence exist alongside violent protests, poor service delivery, and communities in desperate need of the replication of creative solutions to public problems. These initiatives in HIV/AIDS, Health, Climate Change, Housing, and Education are amongst 30 of the best and brightest working examples of South African social innovation that Impumelelo will be bringing together over two days on the 4th and 5th of March. They will compete for the much-coveted 2010 Sustainability Award to be held at their offices in Cape Town at 124 Adderley Street, 5th Floor, Constitution House, Cape Town.

Impumelelo has been doing this since 1999 – unearthing the untold success stories of South Africa’s public sector. To mark their 10th anniversary and to tap into the excitement of the FIFA World Cup, Impumelelo launched the 2010 Sustainability Awards. The launch, which was endorsed by FIFA LOC Chairman, Dr. Danny Jordaan, in Johannesburg last year, coincided with a national environmental best-practice conference.

After sending out more than 3 500 applications to all three tiers of government and various NGO networks around the country, Impumelelo travelled to Cape Town, Bloemfontein, Limpopo, and the Northern Cape to solicit as many applications as possible.

Altogether 240 projects applied, of which 158 project submissions were shortlisted. Impumelelo’s team of 30 evaluators were sent far and wide to compile a rigorous report based on site visits of projects. After a third round of screenings, 30 organisations were selected as finalists.

These organisations will be presenting their projects to Impumelelo’s 13-member independent National Selection Committee (NSC) comprised of notables such as Cheryl Carolus, Johnny Copeland, Graeme Bloch, Andre Kraak, and Marianne Thamm. After the final adjudication presentations, Impumelelo’s NSC will select the 2010 Sustainability award-winners to be announced at the award ceremony on the 16th of May at Cape Town’s Artscape Theatre.

Media, government, and the general public are invited to attend Impumelelo’s 2-day final adjudications, and listen, meet and learn from organisations at the coalface of South African public service delivery and social innovation.

Click here to view the programme for the Final Adjudications.

For more information contact:

Candice Jansen
Impumelelo Media Liaison Officer
candice at impumelelo dot org dot za
083 453 9647
021 424 6360