Constituencies of the College
The College is committed to serving organisations and individuals from working class and poor communities. The College is politically non-sectarian in its relationships with the various organisations from the communities it serves.
Over the many years of its work with mass organisations the College’s main constituencies are the trade unions, community-based organisations, student and youth organisations, churches and ecumenical organisations, cooperatives, non-governmental organisations and the emerging social movements.
Whereas the College works mainly with organised constituencies, some of the programmes do provide space for participation by individual activists and development practitioners.
Khanya College services constituencies and organisations all over South Africa, in Southern Africa as well as other parts of the world. In particular, the programmes of the College all emphasise broadening our work to include facilitating links and solidarity among the social movements and mass organisations in the Southern Africa region. The new emphasis on the region is a response to the increasing political, social and economic integration of the region.
Community Health Workers
Community Health Workers form an important part of the health care system but receive very little recognition. As part of a large and growing group of precarious workers in South Africa, CHWs endure some of the most difficult working conditions. Khanya College has worked with and supported CHWs since 2009, and has facilitated their organization and supported their struggles during this time.
School Youth (Tsohang Batjha!)
The Tsohang Batjha project covers high school youth between the ages of 12 and 18 years in schools and OVCCs in the inner-city and surrounding townships of Johannesburg.
Khanya College, through the Jozi Book Fair programme, promote and develop high-school youth’s confidence, their ability to express themselves in their own languages, to tell their stories through various art forms, games, songs, dance and music and play; and to read and write in their own languages.
Children
Through the Poetry Buddies project Khanya College works with children between the ages of 6 and 12 years. Children who are part of this ongoing programme are drawn from Orphan and Vulnerable Children Centres from townships around Johannesburg. Khanya Collge, through the Jozi Book Fair programme, also produces literature for and by children.
Collaborations & Partnerships
Social Movements
The College has worked with organizations active in a wide range of sectors, including Community Based Organisations active around housing and other social issues in townships, organizations campaigning against water privatisation, debt and reparations campaign organisations, land and agrarian reform organisations, trade unions, organisations of informal sector workers, women’s organisations, the youth, and environmental justice organisations. Khanya also works with organisations of cultural workers, students and organisations involved the adult basic education sector.
For many of these organizations Khanya provides a number of support services. These include providing infrastructure to hold meetings, training for the leadership of the organisations in various organisation-building skill, and in developing strategies around campaigns they are currently involved in. The College is also involved, on an ongoing basis, in assisting in the formation of new organisations in these sectors.
Schools
For the last 5 year Khanya College has built partnerships with school in the inner-city Johannesburg and surrounding townships. By 2016 this partnership involved 45 schools in 13 townships including the inner-city.
The partnership covers a number of areas of cooperation:
- The College helps with setting up book clubs in schools and in promoting a culture of writing and reading, and also publishes stories by pupils.
- The College has set up book boxes in schools where there are no libraries, and assists with training pupils to run the libraries.
iii. A teachers’ forum helps with planning the programme and will facilitating implementation of the programmes in schools.
Orphan & Vulnerable Children Centres
Over the last two years the College has built partnership with OVCCs to promote reading and writing among children between the ages of 6 and 12 years, and among youth between the ages of 13 and 18 years. By the end of 2016 the College had developed partnerships with 13 OVCCs in 5 townships. [See Appendix 2 for a list of OVCCs]
The OVCCs are set up in each township by the Department of Social Development (DSD) and provide children and youth with a daily meal and homework support. The children and youth attend the OVCCs on a daily basis. The formation of the OVCCs were a result of the HIV/Aids pandemic, the prevailing social and economic conditions, and the increase in child and youth headed households (discussed above). The OVCCs are run by various NGOs linked to DSD, and vary from one township to another. Khanya College has developed partnership agreements with the local NGOs who run the 13 OVCs included in this project, and will extend this model to new OVCCs that will be added in the next few years of the project. The college will pursue developing a cooperative relationship with the DSD to advance the project in a way that strengthens the independence of civil society.
The partnership cover a number of key areas:
- Training care-givers in these centres in teaching children and youth to read and to write poetry.
- Helping set up book boxes to facilitate access to books by children in the OVCCs.
iii. Publishing poetry written by children and youth in these centres.
The City of Johannesburg & the Workers Museum
The College has built a partnership with the City of Johannesburg on a range of levels and over a period of almost 2 decades. The City of Johannesburg and Khanya College have built a partnership that has resulted in the refurbishment of the Workers Museum (a museum of migrant labour) in Newtown; in the development of the permanent exhibition of the museum; and the College has collaborated with the City in a number of programmes at the Museum, the Closed Constructions Photographic Exhibition held in 2011.
Currently the partnership covers a number of areas of cooperation:
- Khanya College supplies books written by children and youth, as well as other authors published as part of the programme of the Jozi Book Fair, to the 86 libraries of the City of Johannesburg.
- The City of Johannesburg assists the Jozi Book Fair Festival, held every year in September since 2009, with venues, infrastructure support and programming. In 2017 the City of Johannesburg is providing Mary Fitzgerald Square in Newtown for hosting the Festival.
NGOs, Institutions & Other Organisations
Khanya works with a range of NGOs active in the social justice sectors, and the levels of partnerships vary depending on the programme of the College with which the particular NGO has working relationship with.
Khanya College has also built a range of collaborative relations with institutions and other organisations in order to advance the mutual interests of both Khanya College and the collaborating institutions. Such organisations and institutions include small businesses, academic institutions, independent research institutions, and some cases individuals.
Co-financing Partnerships
Over the years Khanya College has built co-financing partnerships for its programme with a range of donor partners both local foundations, government and international foundations. Since its inception in 1993 Khanya has worked with over 80 co-financing partners on a range of projects. Khanya’s ability to manage these partnerships can be seen in the fact that most of these co-financing partners have had relationships of grant support for Khanya for between 3 and 14 years