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Synergos in Southern Africa

Context

Southern Africa is remarkable for its wealth of human and natural resources. The region is also marked by porous national borders, high degrees of mobility and migration, cultural and kinship interconnections, growing trade and investment links and shared national development challenges. Despite setbacks in some countries (particularly Zimbabwe and Swaziland), over the past fifteen years the region has experienced a transition toward peace, democracy, regional integration and significant growth in the role of civil society.

However, as regional interdependence has grown, so too have divides in terms of wealth, class, race and levels of human and democratic development. Progress in the region is fundamentally threatened by these inequities, which are manifest in barriers to development such as:

• Continued political insecurity and conflict
• Unacceptably high rates of poverty, unemployment, and lack of skills development
• Recurrent drought and food insecurity
• Concentration of land and productive resources in the hands of a few
• And -- critically -- the HIV/AIDS pandemic, which threatens human development, economic growth and democracy.

Fostering a Culture of Giving and Social Justice

Synergos is building upon Southern Africa's deeply rooted traditions of social giving and mutual help to meet these challenges. In collaboration with partners we are mobilizing resources and bridging social and economic divides to reduce poverty, increase equity and advance social justice in the region.

Synergos works at both a regional level and on a national level in Mozambique, South Africa, Zimbabwe and, soon, Namibia. Since 1987, we have joined with partners in Southern Africa to strengthen the capacity of grantmaking organizations, other bridging organizations and individual philanthropists to reduce poverty, increase equity and advance social justice. And we have work to build partnerships and collaboration among civil society, business, government, international agencies and philanthropists active in the region.

Promoting Partnership and Mobilizing Resources for Local Action

Highlights of Synergos work and accomplishments in Southern Africa include:

• Mozambique -- Synergos assisted a group of Mozambicans to establish the Foundation for Community Development, which now provides more than $2 million annually in grants to poor communities throughout the country for sustainable development. The foundation played a catalytic role in the country's flood relief and continues to respond to the HIV/AIDS crisis -- today serving as one of the country's key supporters of community action to address this terrible disease (read more).
• Namibia -- We are exploring the creation of a partnership to increase leadership and capacity for public health that can both benefit the people of that country and serve as a model for similar approaches in other parts of the continent (read more).
• South Africa -- We are working with the Kagiso Trust and other groups to strengthening community partnerships for HIV/AIDS service delivery. We are also working with local groups to strengthen the gay, lesbian, bisexual and trans-gendered (LGBT) community. (read more)
• Zimbabwe -- Synergos helped local partners establish the Community Foundation for the Western Region of Zimbabwe to provide sustainable financing for critically needed projects such as schools, childcare facilities, dam building, and income-generating projects (read more).
• Regionally -- The Southern African Community Grantmaker Leadership Cooperative, first convened by Synergos in 2005, addresses challenges faced in common by many community grantmakers as they seek to achieve lasting community development and anti-poverty impact as well as to become organizationally sustainable. This project brings together 30 senior leaders of Southern African community grantmaker organizations in a knowledge-sharing and peer-learning partnership aimed at enhancing the growth and sustainability of the region's independent development funding.
• Also regionally, Synergos also convenes the "Social Giving and Philanthropy Forum" dialogue series, which includes representatives from foundations, community grantmakers, corporate social investment funds, individual and family philanthropists, state-sponsored development funding channels, welfare organizations, international donors, faith-based organizations and civil society development organizations in a series of knowledge-sharing events. In addition to providing a mechanism for the sharing of information, it is also helping build working connections across different sectors of society.

Synergos also works with, supports and benefits from two other important networks at the regional level. One such group is the Global Philanthropists Circle, which includes four South African families among its members. The existence of a critical mass of GPC members makes it possible to engage private philanthropists in our general mission of strengthening community grantmaking foundations. We involve GPC members not just as donors, but as champions, partners, and exemplars of an African vision of social justice philanthropy. (Read about 2002 and 2003 GPC trips to Southern Africa and about the philanthropic efforts of two GPC member families.)

Another group is the Synergos Senior Fellows, which includes among its alumni and current members 20 distinguished grantmaking and development professionals from Africa. We tap this peer-learning group to share experience and new approaches to indigenous and social justice philanthropy in Southern Africa and across the continent.

A local presence

In January 2007, our work was strengthened by the creation of Synergos (Southern Africa), a South African nonprofit development organization established in partnership with South African leaders in the field of poverty alleviation, development and philanthropy. Founding board members of Synergos (Southern Africa) are Kathy Ackerman Robins, Wendy Appelbaum, Peggy Dulany, Robert Dunn, Ann Emmett, Precious Moloi-Motsepe, Patrick Parring, and Barry Smith.

The work of Synergos (Southern Africa) is supported by local and international donors, including the Atlantic Philanthropies, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the Ford Foundation and South Africa members of the Synergos Global Philanthropists Circle.

For More Information

Contact:

The Synergos Institute (Southern Africa)
Barry Smith
Senior Director, Southern Africa
PO Box 8047
Roggebaai 8012
South Africa
Tel +27 (0)21 421-9788
Fax +27 (0)21 425 0413
bsmith@synergos.org.za
(Visiting address:
10th Floor, ABSA House
25 St. George's Mall
Cape Town 8001
South Africa)

March 2007