Economic Empowerment

The ability for parents to earn an income is the engine that prevents families from poverty and allows children access to opportunities that are critical for them to thrive.

Connect Network’s approach to economic empowerment is based on the premise that non-profit organisations are contributing to the economy by providing employment and volunteer opportunities to mothers, fathers and youth through a wide variety of interventions that influence their ability to enter the economy. Added to this, we recognised that the importance of entrepreneurship and social enterprise in the context of ECD crèche owners is job creation, but our research revealed a lack of financial resources to be the leading barrier of success. Our 2016 research revealed that funding challenges faced by organisations directly affects the organizations’ viability in terms of staff retention, DSD compliance, teaching resources, and ultimately service delivery to the children. Currently through the network more than 5000 people have either paid jobs or volunteer posts. On the basis of stakeholder consensus on working together, there is potential for centralised fundraising, resource mobilisation, capacity enhancement through volunteers, and bulk buying. Connect NPC aims to use this as a basis for advocating on behalf of the network to bring new funds into the sector.

Our goal is to help NGOs position themselves to provide job skills and employment for parents and youth.

Quality Improvement System

A strong well-run organisation has good leadership, sound governance, the right people, healthy financial systems, knows what’s its about, plans well and provides quality services where children benefit. We believe that investors are attracted to NGOs who are committed to quality improvement. Investment in well-lead NGOs enables the organisation to provide skills development, provide employment and enable growth potential of parents and youth.

To read more about QIS, click here.

Advocacy

Through Connect’s links with business, we are able to keep abreast of imminent changes in legislation that could affect investment in the non-profit sector and advocate where possible.