Category: Policy

Digital Standards Workshop – 25th October 2023

📣 British Council & Department of Basic Education’s Digital Standards Development Consultative Workshop on the 25th October, held at the Birchwood Hotel & OR Tambo Conference Centre. Project Lead is Belle and Co. (Belisa Rodrigues), supported by Research Lead from Limina Education Services (Dr Isabel Tarling). And supported by Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office.

💡 What is the Digital Standards Project?

The Digital Standards (or Guidelines) Project is a collaborative co-creative process that draws together diverse stakeholders from the education sector to develop digital standards for learning and teaching in South Africa’s schools and beyond.

📌 Milestone 1 (March/April): Input Document

The 8 month journey has taken us from developing a baseline research called the “Input document” which undertook an integrative literature review approach of all standards and policies related to digital teaching and learning. The Digital Capital Map (which consists of Digital Competencies, Digital Agency and Digital Citizenship).

📌 Milestone 2 (7&8 June): Consultative Roundtable 1

The first broad consultative conference on developing digital standards for digital teaching and learning in South Africa. Around 80 education stakeholders attended from a broad spectrum including academia, private sector, government and civil society including schools.

📌 Milestone 3: Online Working Groups

From June until September, the 6 standards working groups included: (1) Learner, (2) Educator, (3) Education Leaders, (4) Parents & Communities, (5) Service Providers & (6) Institutions and Infrastrucuture Standards. 24 meetings in total were conducted.

📝 Once standards were drafted, these were analysed and converted into google forms for voting by the public. The draft standards are still available for public input. Visit the project website to weigh in: https://sites.google.com/limina.co.za/dsdproject/

📌 Milestone 4 (25th October): Consultative Roundtable 2

Most recently, the working groups and others interested in finalising the draft standards were invited to an all-day workshop to walk, step-by-step, through each draft standard and to vote on them.

💡 Why digital standards?

The White Paper on e-Education (2004) provided South African education with a vision and long-term goals to implement digital learning in all education spaces. We need digital standards for different role players and for institutions to operationalise the White Paper in a practical and contextually relevant way.

💡 What are standards?

Standards are different to policies. Policies provide long-term goals, visions and guidance to entire corporations or countries. Standards operationalise policies in short-term or medium-term goals that target specific role players or institutional functions and processes.

📩 Please email me: Belisa Rodrigues (rodrigues.belisa@gmail.com) or send a message to ssa.events@britishcouncil.org.za (Subject header: Digital Standards Project)

DSD-A4-booklet-25-October-finalDownload

Developing Digital Standards for South African Schools

7&8 June 2023

#SchoolsConnect #DigitalStandards

Belle and Co. is the Project Lead on the Digital Standards Development project for all schools in South Africa.

Role players from all spheres are invited to participate in the development of the digital standards in two rounds of in-person roundtable meetings, and various online working group meetings between June and December 2023. Through iterative rounds of refinement and redevelopment, these role players will develop the digital standards to inform digital learning in South Africa’s schools and department of education offices.

Background

The project is funded through the FCDO’s UK Digital Access Programme which aims to catalyse more inclusive, affordable, safe and secure digital access for excluded and underserved communities in Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Brazil and Indonesia through sustainable models and enablers.

It’s a joint project by British Council, Department of Basic Education and supported by FCDO.

The determined need is that policy engagement around digital technologies in basic education will result in more available support for teachers and learners, and a more inclusive and effective basic education system at large.

Overview of the DSD Project

The ultimate output of the project is the development and dissemination of a Digital Standards document published making recommendations in digital technologies for teaching and learning at school level.

The aim is that a simple 2-page ‘standards document’ will be produced which can be used by the sector – in policy, as a support tool for school leaders + schools; in teacher development.

Research Input Document

To assist in this Standards Development Process, a research document called “Input Document”, has been developed referencing research and policy initiatives in this area of standards development across the globe.

This is available for you to read here: Developing Standards for Digital Learning and Teaching Input Document

June Consultative event (7&8 June 2023)

Over the last 2 days, over 100 education stakeholders from all over South Africa descended on Gauteng to attend the inaugural Digital Standards Development consultative event. The objective of Day 1 was to create shared understanding of Digital Citizenship and Digital Standards making; Day 2 objective was to start to work on standards for various role -players and institutions.

The 2-day event concluded with the “Operationalisation of the Online Standards Working Groups”. Participants who were particularly keen to be part of the on-going development and building of standards were encouraged to join a thematic working group and agreed to meet 4-6 times over the coming months.

Ultimately, after all the input has been received from working groups, a draft set of standards will be presented to the second consultative event on the 25 & 26th October 2023.

Whereafter, a final standards document will be launched and disseminated in early 2024.

DSD-Workshop-Programme_latestDownload

Ground Up: Local workshop on SE indicators

14 April

As part of the EU Erasmus Plus Programme called “Ground Up: Social Entrepreneurial Ecosystems for Resilient Cities”, Belle and Co. designed and delivered a 1 hour local workshop for Social Enterprises in South Africa. The response was overwhelming with 50 RSVPs streaming in, curious to know more about the project,

The project outcome: A set of indicators to measure the health of the Social Enterprise Ecosystem.
Number of partners countries involved: 11 Partners (North Macedonia, Costa Rica, South Africa, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Poland, Denmark, Ecuador, Serbia and Peru)
Number of months: 18 month project (Jan 2022 – until July 2023)

A project of this nature is inherently tricky, as it is trying to capture a set of mainly quantitative indicators to measure how well supported the Social Enterprise Ecosystem is in a given local (city, region, nation).

The 4 pillars the project focused on include:

  • Human Capital
  • Funding and Finance
  • Support Systems
  • Quality of Life

The local workshop, held on the 14 April 2023, was to showcase the Social Enterprise Ecosystem Assessment Tool that the SA team had developed so far and the data sources they had managed to find. It was also an opportunity for the ecosystem themselves to validate or dispute the tool and its sources.

WORKSHOP VIDEO

If you missed this session, you can view the whole workshop video here:

Designing Entrepreneurship Policy Courses

Over the last few months, Belle and Co. has been working with the i4Policy team on converting the heavy Entrepreneurship Policy Toolkit into a lighter series of 4 short online modules.

Through a rigorous selection process, 15 policy makers were shortlisted from 10 African countries to participate in the Entrepreneurship Policy Course.

The courses were all 2 hours long, and consisted of self-directed pre-work, guest speaker input, interactive individual and group exercises and loads of peer-to-peer engagement.

See below modules and their descriptions. Click through the slideshow:

Below you will find some feedback from the participants of the short online courses:

Above images designed by i4Policy.

Entrepreneurship Policy Mini-Workshop

10 June 2022

This policy toolkit was co-created by Innovation for Policy Foundation (i4Policy) and Make-IT in Africa, with the support of leading policy experts and GIZ. The Entrepreneurship Policy Mini-workshop served to introduce this beta toolkit to a wider audience at the Pan-African Youth Assembly.

Belle and Co. helped design and deliver the workshop session with the i4policy team. The toolkit is available in Beta form on the https://ecosystem.build/toolkit website.

i4Policy is focused on innovative policy processes at the local and regional level advancing entrepreneurship and digital transformation in Africa. The goal of i4Policy is to help shape African policy and create an environment that encourages business growth and innovation.

The Future is Co-Created

The title of this blog “The Future is Co-Created” is a tag line from an amazing client that Belle and Co. is privileged to be working with, The Innovation for Policy Foundation. Haven’t heard about them yet? Let me introduce you …

The Innovation for Policy Foundation (i4Policy) is a pan-African non-governmental organization that brings citizens, communities and governments together to co-create the future! They do this by:

  • Re-imagining governance
  • Designing participation
  • Teaching Transformation

Re-imagining Governance

From co-initiating and coordinating the Global Assembly, to launching a viral crowdsourcing campaign during the covid-19 pandemic that reached more than 200m people, i4Policy works to amplify people power to address the greatest challenges and opportunities of our generation.

Designing participation

We design and host open and effective public engagement processes: from global declarations to national legislation, from one-off consultations to multi-year co-decision processes, and across the policy cycle from agenda setting through to collective sense-making.

Teaching Transformation

We develop open source tools, research, participation methodologies, and governance ontologies to support the transformation of our economies and societies. We’ve trained and equipped hundreds of government officials and community leaders in more than 80 countries to lead this transformation.

Read more about their work here: https://i4policy.org

In February 2022, Belle and co. was approached to join the i4Policy team as their Pedagogical expert. A major project they were developing, revolved around designing resources, tools and learning material for policy-makers in the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Ecosystem in Africa.

This work has become increasingly important as more and more African countries are adopting a new forward-looking Start-Up law-making process to support high growth entrepreneurs, many of them in the tech-based ecosystem.

I4Policy Foundation has assisted many governments to pursue more participatory policy processes (see below ADDIS process and the Senegal Start Up Case Study as an example of activities supported). The idea is to be as inclusive as possible when co-designing meaningful policies with the people whose lives will be impacted.

In my next few blogs, you will start to read about the policy-related projects that Belle and co. will be helping to develop over the year/s to come. See related Tags: Policy, i4Policy to find those blog posts.

DIVE 3: Social Economy Policy Debate

Belle and co. discusses the South African social economy policy and role of social enterprise from a South African perspective in the second episode of the Dive 3 debates. DIVE is a EU Erasmus+ supported social enterprise programme involving 12 countries around the world.

Live Video below (went live 2 December 2019)

Extract from the Social Economy Policy consultation invitation (30 October 2019): 

The South African government, through the Economic Development Department (EDD) is developing a policy to strengthen and stimulate the social economy so that it can grow and thrive. 

The social economy is a people centred approach to economic development, based on principles of sustainable activity that stimulates socially and environmentally responsible growth through solidarity and social inclusion. Examples of social economy organisations include stokvels, co-operatives, social enterprises and non-profits organisations. 

After several consultation sessions in 2018, a draft Green Paper has been written which frames and makes recommendations on the following themes: 

– Support Framework – Sizing and Scoping the sector: What is the social economy, and how do we define and measure it? 

– Financial Inclusion and resourcing: How do we innovate existing mechanisms to better fund and resource the social economy? 

– Access to markets: Where are the gaps and opportunities in supply chains that can be strengthened to support the social economy? 

– Legal and regulatory: What is the best legal and regulatory environment? Do we need a legal form for social enterprises? 

– New Economies and Innovation: What can we do to position the social economy to be innovative, and respond to future needs? 

DOWNLOAD: DRAFT Green Paper 7 May 2019 with cases 3.

 

Comments on the policy can be sent to:

krige@ilo.org 

AAppolis@economic.gov.za 

SEGreenpaper@economic.gov.za 

Or WhatsAPP: 0663018278 (Kerryn Krige)

MORE INFO: https://www.ilo.org/global/topics/cooperatives/projects/WCMS_501549/lang–en/index.htm

 

DIVE 3 Social Enterprise and International Frameworks Debate

Belle and Co will be posting weekly Facebook Live Debate episodes exploring the topic of Social Enterprise from a South African perspective, as part of the EU Erasmus+ Supported Programme called “Dive 3: Zero to One > 1 to N”.

EPISODE 1: Social Enterprise as an International Framework or Global Movement, and its relationship to a South African context (released Monday 25th November).

This local series aims to create some discussion around the topic of SE in South Africa in a 5-part weekly series.

The DIVE programme has been running for 3 years together with 12 countries: Macedonia (lead country), Romania, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Greece, Poland, Italy, Portugal, Peru, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and South Africa.

More information on the programme please visit the project website: http://dive.youthalliance.org.mk

Follow the debates online, Belle and Co’s Facebook @belle.co.za and posted below as they arise.

 

 

Dive Deeper into SE: Youth Policy presentation in Bulgaria

Sofia, Bulgaria: May, 2018

Belle and Co. Associate Phokeng Setai and Director Belisa Rodrigues, participated in the Dive Deeper Programme focused on Youth Policy and Social Entrepreneurship. Belle and Co. presented an overview of South African youth policy, and learnt about youth policy initiatives in 8 other countries (Macedonia, Romania, Bulgaria, Portugal, Turkey, Greece, Costa Rica and Peru).

Training course focused on increasing the understanding of the participants on the importance of cooperation in youth sector and developing quality youth strategies, the participants developed their skills needed to prepare quality youth strategy, to network with various bodies representing youth, to effectively use manuals, guidelines on social entrepreneurship in youth field, to adjust tools, methods etc.

Belle and Co. participates in Creative Activism Workshop

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Tshisimani Activist Centre, Mowbray, Cape Town: March 2018

We were exposed to various forms of creative and cultural activism, read case studies, had a guest speaker from SWEAT sharing live campaigns, and we formed teams to pitch our activist campaign to others.

Our project centered around “community safety and security” where we came up with an innovative idea on how to utilise public spaces (especially street corners) to claim back or occupy the streets into productive community spaces.

We called it “The Triangle Project”. See video here.