On Saturday 22nd November 2014, We Believe in Africa launched “Our Schools” in Eldorado Park with the partnership of Spar Eldorado Park and Eldos FM, the local community radio station. We invited the Spar stores and customers in Eldorado Park to invest/contribute/donate a minimum of R1 to their purchases to raise funds for the 31 schools in the community.

We would use the same model for improving the schools as we used with “Legacy”. We empowered all the Spar’s tellers with training to ask each of their customers to donate and inform them about the program. We placed in-store advertisements in both stores, aired radio advertisements on Eldos FM and had board members and temp staff (in-store ambassadors) over the weekends to raise awareness about the program. We focused on effective marketing on various platforms to engage Spar customers, earning their trust and strengthening our awareness in the community. We believed this was a win-win
partnership for everyone; the children, schools, Spar store owners, Eldos FM, the community and our organization.

1. Inactive board
The board of WBIA, as with many NGO boards went from an active board when we started up with everyone getting involved to 10% board participation. The correct method is to always be updating one board, as board members’ desires/interests/focus changes it is wise to actively find new replacements who have new insights, networks and energy.

2. Better leadership
With changes always taking place, new ideas developing and programs expanding, it is wise to have leadership and skills in place to have a team and to be able to delegate responsibility to other board members. When time becomes tight and resources scare, having an active team share the challenge and opportunity makes the process simpler and increases the chances of success and growth. An example of this is, handing a lead over to another member and allowing and trusting them to contact the lead, make it a hot lead and then convert it to an organizational growth opportunity. This happened twice and we failed at it.

3. No pool/list of volunteers
We have no volunteers to assist us with rolling out or supporting any of our programs. We reached out to our database and found none. It is fundamental for a social program like “Our Schools” to get active support, presence in a new environment and raise awareness about a program. It could be the difference between success or failure and all you have to do is ask and ask some more. We did not ask enough or earlier enough. For those who want to start up or want to implement a new social program, always searching for and recruiting inspiring,
willing and educated volunteers.

4. Staff
We found this point most impactful with working with the tellers within the Spar stores. We found the tellers were not passionate and lacked the self-confidence to engage with customers. We believe this could have been easily overcome if we had part/full-time staff within the store. They could assist with training on a daily basis, which is fundamental with new staff joining regularly and updating/reminding the tellers of the program. The fundamental part of this point would be the coaching and mentoring of the tellers in this process, where the staff can guide and support the tellers in the startup process, with skills and encouragement. Staff would have allowed us to have engagement with our vision and target marketing on a daily basis.

5. School engagement
Part of our marketing plan was to roll out at every school within the community. Speaking at school events; such as assemblies, teacher and principal meetings and parent evenings; putting up posters on the school premises and in classrooms. This would allow the children and schools to know about the program and engage with it on a daily basis. However, due to the point above and the point below we were unable to
exercise this critical point.

6. Funding
I am not sure if this is a reason or an excuse? Funding, money, startup capital. We had startup funding, thanks to board members’ personal funds, which paid for in-store branding (posters, flyers, on shelf-promotion). However, funding for part-time staff would have made the difference. Within a community where unemployment is high, budgets are tight and helping others is not a high priority; having staff on the ground and engaging tellers and customers would have been a difference maker. With the model basis on a singular rand, having full-time staff would never work, because the funds were for school upliftment, period. So this funding would have to be for start-up purposes, lasting only for 3-6 months to allow the program to grow.
Funding would buy time, which would lead to engagement, which would lead to results.

We experienced this support and funding from a businessman named Graham in Cape Town for “˜Legacy”. Who funded staff costs in Khayelitsha at Nkazimlo Primary School with our coordinator Paul?
So 6 points made failure possible again for We Believe in Africa, what was positive? There is much have been something good that came from it.