Sustainable Livelihoods – The Nelson Mandela Childrens Fund

Sustainable
Livelihoods

The Sustainable Livelihoods Programme (SLP) was introduced to the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund (NMCF) in 2009. It’s main goal is to strengthen families economically to cope with their vulnerabilities and work their way out of poverty, so that children may live in good health, peace, security, and comfort. The SLP capacitates implementing partners (IPs) financially and technically to achieve its objectives on the ground. The central component that SLP utilises is the Self-Help Group (SHG) approach. SHGs are encouraged to hold regular meetings in which members can discuss their challenges, support each other, come up with solutions, and exchange their knowledge and skills. Groups are trained on how to initiative and operate viable income-generating activities (IGAs), such as blockmaking, agriculture, poultry, and sewing, just to name a few. Groups are also engaged in Savings Mobilisation Programmes to build their financial reserves.

While the central idea is that communities can do away with dependency syndrome, it also recognises that the challenges they face cannot always be solved by them alone. Therefore, SLP also assists with linkages to other sources of support, such as Local Economic Development (LED) units, clinics, businesses, and other influential stakeholders.

If the SHGs are successfully run for a period of 12 months, they are graduated into formally registered Cooperatives to gain further support from government. While its own entity, the SLP also functions as the golden thread between the three programmes of the Fund to ensure more holistic efforts to achieve its objectives. In summary, if the SLP services babies, children, youth, pregnant women, and parents/caregivers by providing support to establish and run SHGs focussed on economic and social empowerment monthly for one year, then SLP can achieve economic and social resilience that supports children’s healthy development and outcomes.

A graphical summary timeline of SLP (2016-2021) is provided below. For further details on the history of the program, refer to the SLP Critical Reflection and Review Document (2022).

NMCF recognises that there are numerous challenges the country and its people are confronted with. The organisation has identified the following most pressing challenges that it would like to contribute towards addressing.

The SLP will focus on addressing the above challenges in the following ways:

The key strategies that SLP will employ to address poverty are:

NMCF places children at the heart of their focus and recognises the fact that children are located within a family and a community which is fundamental to their health, safety, wellbeing, empowerment, and the provision and promotion of their holistic rights and responsibilities. Bronfenbrenner’s (1986) socio-ecological framework views child development as a complex system of interactions at multiple levels of the surrounding environment, from family, friends, schools, and communities, to broader-level values, economics, laws, and policies. Bronfenbrenner divided a person’s environment into diﬀerent systems, including the micro-system, exo-system, and macro-system.

The identified partners will operate in the following priority districts. As illustrated in the map below, a total of 25 priority districts have been identified for the strategic period (2023-2027). A subset of 12 priority districts will be targeted in the first phase (2023) (green pins) and the remaining 13 priority districts will be targeted in the second phase (2025) (red pins). The priority districts specific to SLP for the first strategic period are shown in green text.