During the course of a visit to the PASCAL Centre in Pretoria, PASCAL Co-directors Catherine Odora Hoppers, Paul Crawford and Mike Osborne and PASCAL Vice-Chair, Chris Shepherd had the pleasure of visiting the Seriti Institute [1] and hearing of its work from one of its founders Gavin Andersson. The projects that the Institute is engaged in provide opportunities of thousands of South Africans to experience work, some for the very first time, and we commend the work.
The Seriti Institute strengthens community organization for social health and local economic development. It uses large scale participatory methods, and in its systemic interventions forges partnerships involving communities, government departments, NGOs, Civil Society and business.
Seriti's work ranges from leadership development to project implementation. It is one of two Implementing Agents for the South African government’s Community Work Programme, and was one of the main partners in the Kwanda reality TV show, the first 'make-over' show for communities. The following video clip gives more details:
About the video clip: Kwanda is a reality TV 'community make-over' show aimed at inspiring communities across the country to get organised to meet their social challenges. The show was the first of its kind, with five teams competing against one another to make their community "look better, feel better and work better" -- the catchphrase of the show. It was broadcast during 2009 as a 13 part TV series on SABC 1. The aim of using the media was to have a wider impact through reaching viewers of the series outside of the Kwanda communities. The final episode involved viewers voting for the community they believed had performed the best in tackling the development issues facing them.