A local athlete from a Claremont-based Oasis Association, a non-profit organisation, scooped two medals at the Special Olympics that took place in Abu Dhabi from Thursday 14 March to Thursday 21 March.

The 45-year-old intellectually disabled Jeffrey Julies from Belhar brought home a gold medal for standing long jump and a bronze medal for the 50m walk for men. Though Julies could not be reached for a comment as he reportedly does not have a phone, he left a message during a workshop before the date of departure, stating his eagerness to give his best in the competition.

“I am happy and pleased to go represent the country. I just want to do my best. I don’t care about medals”

Beverley Damons, workshop manager at Oasis Association, said:

“He was very nervous before he left but was so honoured to represent his country.”

The South African team comprises of 70 athletes who represented the country in football, futsal (five-a-side female soccer), table tennis, equestrian, bocce, open-water swimming, athletics and golf. A total of 21 coaches and seven support staff accompanied the team.

The Special Olympics as the world’s largest humanitarian sporting event and a global movement which focuses on the empowerment of people with intellectual disabilities through the power of sport.

She says Julies was able to access meaningful work at the Oasis Associations Protective Workshops, where people with intellectual disabilities are afforded the opportunity to participate in work activities within a protected and safe environment. He has been with Oasis for 27 years. She says following one’s dreams often requires dedication, perseverance, and the overcoming of arduous obstacles and that Julies’ rise to national colours was not a facile journey.

Gail Davids, services manager at the Oasis Association, added that Julies and thousands like him, have the capacity to make meaningful contributions to society but are often not afforded the opportunity to do so.

“People with intellectual disabilities are capable, but often societal stereotypes prevent them from doing so,”

 

she said. Oasis provides employment opportunities which are critical for them. The NPO also goes an extra mile to meet the holistic needs of these individuals through key programmes and projects including weekly education classes, life and work skills programmes, feeding schemes, diversion programmes, occupational units – for the training of basic motor skills, and social work services. It was through one of these empowerment programmes offered at Oasis Association, that Julies was able to access the opportunity to participate in the Special Olympics.

The Article first appeared in the Peoples Post

The Oasis Association in Claremont is proud that one of its beneficiaries will be competing in the Special Olympics, starting tomorrow in Abu Dhabi.

Jeffrey Julies, 46, from Belhar, is one of several South African athletes with intellectual disabilities representing the country. He has been part of Oasis for 27 years and, according to Oasis spokesperson, is one of 370 intellectually disabled people at the organisation’s two protective workshops.

“Very often people form stereotypes of what people with intellectual disabilities can and can’t do. Jeffrey’s story highlights what is possible for people with intellectual disabilities, if they are given the opportunity to realise their potential,”

 

said Ms Fransman. Mr Julies who stands at 1.85 metres tall, will be participating in the 100m walk for men, the standing long jump and the 50m walk for men. Mr Julies, pictured, is currently overseas preparing for the competition so was unavailable to comment.

Gail Davids, services manager at the Oasis Association, added that Julies and thousands like him, have the capacity to make meaningful contributions to society but are often not afforded the opportunity to do so. “People with intellectual disabilities are capable, but often societal stereotypes prevent them from doing so,” she said.

Oasis provides employment opportunities which are critical for them. The NPO also goes an extra mile to meet the holistic needs of these individuals through key programmes and projects including weekly education classes, life and work skills programmes, feeding schemes, diversion programmes, occupational units – for the training of basic motor skills, and social work services.

It was through one of these empowerment programmes offered at Oasis Association, that Julies was able to access the opportunity to participate in the Special Olympics.

 

The article initially appeared in the Southern Suburbs Tatler

Organisations helping Cape Town’s disabled people have paid tribute to Pinelands resident Vivienne van der Merwe, who has retired from the Western Cape Network on Disability at the age of 80.

Ms Van der Merwe spent 20 years with the network, and before that she worked for the Oasis Association – also for 20 years.

Many of those who honoured her in Salt River last Friday, spoke about the important role she had played for the disabled.

Vincent Daniels, from the Cape Town Society for the Blind, said Ms Van der Merwe’s work had a lot to do with her son, Jacque van der Merwe, 49, who has an intellectual disability.

Ms Van der Merwe approached Oasis when Jacque was 4, and the association – which was founded in 1952 as a school for children with intellectual disabilities – helped to improve his condition by the time he was in his 20s.

Van der Merwe then joined Oasis’s staff in 1978 as transport director, which saw her teaching disabled people how to use public transport.

After retiring from Oasis at the age of 60, she joined the Western Cape Network on Disability – an umbrella body for several organisations, including the Cape Town Society for the Blind, Cape Mental Health, and the Institute for the Promotion of Disabled Manpower.

Apart from being very good at taking minutes, she helped the disabled with transport-related challenges and was very vocal about the need to build homes for disabled people, who could be left in vulnerable circumstances once their parents died.

 

“Vivienne had made a significant contribution to this sector due to the continuity of her service and her passion, which has been amazing after all the years,” said Tessa Wood, from the Western Cape Forum for Intellectual Disability.

 

Sandra Ambrose, from the Disabled Children’s Action Group, said Ms Van der Merwe was a woman of integrity and took time to get to know people.

Cleone Jordan, from the Institute for the Promotion of Disabled Manpower, described her as “very welcoming, very engaging in her approach”.

Mr Daniels, who has had a close working relationship with Ms Van der Merwe, said the network had started on the back of a lot of hard work and she had “always been the person to keep the bits and pieces together”.

Ms Van der Merwe, who is an honorary vice-president of the Oasis Association, said she planned to catch up on her reading during her retirement.

by WESLEY FORD

The Oasis Association in Cape Town was the first winner of the Mail & Guardian‘s Greening the Future award for non-profit organisations in 2003. Over the past decade, the organisation has moved mountains — and not just of trash — to ensure that people with intellectual disabilities are empowered.

Oasis is proof that green success stories, which highlight the reduction of people’s effect on the environment, are also about human development. The organisation employs people with intellectual disabilities on recycling projects. Its stated mission is “to enable persons with intellectual disability to realise their fullest potential at each stage of their development, and thereby become as independent and productive as possible within the community“. Moderate, mild, severe or profound intellectual disabilities affect about 3% of all people worldwide.

Oasis started in 1952 when a group of parents found a solution to the problem of their children being excluded from mainstream society by starting their own school — an oasis — for children with intellectual disabilities. Today the organisation provides employment opportunities, skills development training, daycare centres and residential homes for more than 450 people in the greater Cape Town area. In 2003, the Greening the Future judges praised Oasis as “a special and unique project with a holistic approach to integrating social concerns and environmental issues”. “It has explored the question of recycling and reuse of resources very efficiently, even venturing into areas where no one else bothered to go,” the judges said at the time.

The Oasis workforce consists of people with various intellectual disabilities who are employed in recycling and waste management projects that generate income for the association and contribute to its self-sustainability. Executive director Gail Bester says Oasis has seen “a lot of growth” since winning the Greening the Future award 10 years ago. “This is obvious not only from our statistical information, but also the qualitative enhancement both to Oasis’s projects and the work lives of people with intellectual disability.” In 2003 the organisation processed between 60 and 78 tonnes of mixed recyclable waste a month, generating an annual turnover of R166 202. By the end of the 2011-2012 financial year it was processing more than 203 tonnes of recycling a month, which, together with two shops it has opened, yielded a trading income of more than R4-million. In November 2003, just months after winning Greening the Future, Oasis was awarded a tender to manage Old Mutual’s waste and recycling at the company’s head office in Pinelands. “We currently have 362 intellectually disabled workers who are hard at work on three recycling projects and who, together with the shops, generated 47.3% of our income at the end of the last financial year,” says Bester. “Our recycling project has won more national and international awards over the years. As a result, it is probably true to say that today we are better known for our recycling efforts rather than for the fact that we are leaders in the disability field.”

As word spread about its recycling project, the Western Cape department of environmental affairs and development planning asked it to present a best-practice model to more than 300 delegates at the Cape Town waste minimisation summit in 2010. Bester says Oasis has come up with a “win-win situation for all” and that it is a working model of the triple bottom line in sustainability: “We meet a social need by providing intellectually disabled adults with employment, which creates income for the workers and the organisation. And we provide an easy solution for Cape Town residents in terms of disposing of their recyclable waste, resulting in a very significant saving of landfill space.” Desiree Behr, the donor development manager at Oasis, says the company launched various other income-generating projects over the years because “funding is always a major issue for non-governmental organisations”. “Although we raised 55.5% of our income last year through our trading activities and investments, we are still dependent on donors to fund the more welfare-focused aspects of our services, such as day centres and residential facilities,” says Behr. “State subsidies accounted for 28.5% of our income last year, but we had to raise the rest through fundraising events and appeals to corporate donors, trusts and foundations, and individuals.”

Two shops selling recycled bric-a-brac and books were opened in Claremont and Pinelands, generating at least R2-million last year. Oasis now also runs a bakery and tea garden in Claremont to earn cash. The bakery “initially focused on producing bread for our daily feeding scheme for the poor. But the tantalising aroma of fresh, hot bread and the spread of word-of-mouth advertising led to requests from members of the public for the bread to be made available to them too,” says Behr. Oasis was voted a Greening the Future winner because of its “comprehensive sustainability, environmental innovation and social involvement”.

Ten years later, the evidence shows they were right.

Article initially appeared in the Mail and Guardian

As the financial pressure for those working for non-profit organisations continues, the debate for and against social entrepreneurship is intensifying in South Africa.

Social entrepreneurship is hard to define, with different interpretations in different countries. In South Africa, it is emerging as a blend of for- and not-for-profit approaches, which balances the value and trust of social organisations with the efficiencies and profit motive of business. Within this is a conflict that challenges our cultural interpretation of charity – to make money out of social services is interpreted as inherently wrong and counter-intuitive to the mission-focus of civil society.

It is this dissonance that makes social entrepreneurship so powerful in SA, as it forces us to look at what we assume is right and challenge the ‘norm’.

Multiple reports talk of a crisis in civil society, and question the sustainability of the current system of funding, which is largely dependent on grants. Compounding this is a fractured relationship with a government that subsidises rather than funds non-profits to deliver essential services, in fields such as child protection, education and health.

The concept of social entrepreneurship addresses some of the constraints that civil society organisations in SA experience. It introduces a profit motive to the running of an organisation, which fundamentally shifts the way non-profit leaders approach their work. It is not much different to the non-profit structure in that profit must be re-invested back into the organisation, but it opens up different avenues of funding.

Because social enterprises in SA are often registered as both for- and not-for-profit companies, they can access both grant and commercial funding. This opens a spectrum of opportunities from accessing equity and debt funding, to developing an income stream that brings in predictable, unrestricted income to organisations. Interestingly, the consequence of this approach is not a shift away from the mission of the organisation, but instead a focus on it. Non-profit organisations that succeed in adapting to social entrepreneurship introduce income into their organisations that aligns with their work.

Great examples in SA are the Oasis Association in South Africa, which generates income through its recycling activities – but the rationale to the service is safe, structured employment for people with intellectual disability.

Greg Maqoma set up a for-profit company to fund the development of young dancers, which is the primary focus of the Vuyani Dance Theatre. The graduate of the GIBS Social Entrepreneurship Programme has successfully managed to transform this grant-dependent arts organisation into a highly successful dance company, which has won numerous international awards.

Another example is the focus of Spark Schools, to improve the calibre of teachers by focusing on teacher training, a mission which is funded through the low-fee schools Spark operates.

The consequence for organisations starting out with a social entrepreneurial bent is that they think differently about how they deliver their services. Weaved into their models are opportunities to generate income that underpin the service.

Examples here include Iyeza Express, which delivers chronic medication to patients in Khayelitsha, using bicycles and charging an affordable R10. Claire Reed responded to the difficulties in growing vegetables by developing a fertilised seed strip, which she sells in nurseries and schools, which funds the vegetable gardens she builds in schools.

It may seem counter-intuitive, but profit encourages a focus on impact, as without quality service delivery, the organisation doesn’t have customers, and consequently, no income. This has links to accountability and transparency, creating a circle that builds trust, credibility and profit.

Social entrepreneurship in SA is not the magic solution that will eradicate the constraints that non-profit organisations experience. But it offers potential to shift our civil society into a different way of doing things. It creates a focus on long-term sustainability, on quality service, efficiency and accountability. It blends the lessons from business with the diversity and complexity of social values, and in the mix are great opportunities for change.

In the words of Bernard Shaw: “Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds, cannot change anything.”

Article first appeared in Alive2Green

South Africans and the world at large celebrated the International Nelson Mandela Day by engaging in charity work, students from the University of the Western Cape’s (UWC) Centre for Students Support Services (CSSS) also rolled up their sleeves and got to work at the Oasis Protective Workshop – a workshop of the Oasis Association for Persons with Intellectual Disabilities – in Elsies River on Thursday, 18 July 2013. Businesses, governments, civil society and individuals globally contributed to various charity organisations in honour of the legacy of the now ailing former president Nelson Mandela.

UWC students and staff – conscious of the historical significance of the University within the broader community of Cape Town and armed with paint-brushes, roller brushes and step ladders – repainted the walls of the workshop with one thing in mind: to do as Mandela did his whole life – help other people.

“We’ve had a great partnership with UWC. Our recycling programme receives a lot of support from UWC and members of the UWC community coming here to do this for us is totally awesome,” said manager of Oasis, Beverly Damons.

 

She said the organisation has many challenges it wishes to address and that when institutions like UWC offer themselves for partnerships with her organisation, it is a gesture that is always welcomed. “The biggest challenge we have here is transport. We have a group now of 206 persons with intellectual disabilities working here and this number is likely to increase but we don’t have transport to, for example, fetch people from the southern suburbs or the Khayelitsha area, so we are forced to accommodate people from the northern suburbs for now, “ said Damons.

UWC students painted the walls in the canteen of the workshop in a bright colour. “This canteen is very important to the people who work here. It is their dining hall, their theatre for our dance shows and it is a communal space for them. The work being done by UWC students here will not be forgotten because every time we eat here, we will be reminded of the students from UWC,” added Damons. According to Monique Withering, coordinator of leadership and social responsibility at the Centre for Students Support Services (CSSS) at UWC, their aim for taking students to the Oasis Protective Workshop was broader initiative than the 67 minutes spoken about everywhere.

“We want our students to have a new view of life. We want to encourage a tradition of community involvement so that they are able to change their ways of thinking and ultimately change the communities from which they come,” said Withering. She added that among other community projects her Centre is running the Remember and Give (RAG) and the Enactus, an international student organisation whose focus is on building a community of student, academic and business leaders, committed to using the power of entrepreneurial action to transform lives and shape a better, more sustainable world, formerly called Students In Free Enterprise (SIFE) initiatives. The students develop projects focusing on 3 key areas, people, planet and profit. Membership is open to students from all faculties.

 

Article first appeared on UWC website.