About two dozen government projects will be rewarded in April for achieving effective and creative service delivery
Suzan Chala
For the fourth year running the Impumelelo Innovations Award Programme will hand over close to R1-million to government and public-private partnerships in recognition of their efforts in alleviating poverty and addressing key development issues.
The money “must be used in part to disseminate knowledge of how each winning programme has tackled the national priority of poverty reduction. In this way, Impumelelo (a Zulu and Xhosa word for success) seeks to encourage others to adopt ideas and methods that have proven their worth in alleviating the plight of poorer citizens,” says former Human Rights Commissioner and now director of the trust, Rhoda Kadalie.
Of 217 entries received this year, 43 made the shortlist. Projects range from job creation, community development and skills training to crime prevention, environmental upgrading and improved delivery of basic social services.
“Projects must be innovative, effective, sustainable, replicable and should impact on poverty,” says Kadalie, explaining the criteria used to judge the project. They “must in some way address pressing poverty-related issues in South African communities and be submitted or co-submitted by the government agencies involved”.
Among the judges are Impumelelo founder Warren Krafchik, Liberty Foundation executive director Hylton Apelbaum, Pan Africanist Congress MP Patricia de Lille, African National Congress MPs Barbara Hogan and Wilmot James, veteran politician Helen Suzman and Herdbouys chairperson Peter Vundla.
The award was initiated under the aegis of the Institute for Democracy in South Africa, with funding from the Ford Foundation, the Open Society Foundation of South Africa, the Netherlands government and the Human Sciences Research Council.
“Impumelelo,” says Kadalie, “aims to identify and highlight innovative and effective examples of service delivery in the public sector, to reward projects that successfully focus on the reduction of poverty and the improvement of the quality of life of the poor, and to spread the word about projects that improve delivery in the country.”
Previous winners indicate the range of entries. The Missionvale Community Housing Initiative in Port Elizabeth a project managed by an NGO, provincial and local government and other private organisations was among those honoured in 1999. It has two phases: housing construction and social upliftment of the occupants.
The Zibambele Road Maintenance System in KwaZulu-Natal was honoured in 2000 for its work in targetting destitute families with no income, with a bias towards woman-headed households. Each household is allocated a certain length of road to maintain, depending on the difficulty of the terrain. At the time of receiving the award, Zibambele had awarded 98% of its road maintenance contracts to woman-headed households in rural KwaZulu-Natal. This initiative was developed by the province’s department of transport.