Sikka is a platform whose entire purpose is to document, with an essence of archiving, memorable, iconic moments and events that have truly shaped the feel of the Sudanese revolution.
Currently funded by the Goethe Institute, it is currently the only archiving platform that tells a positive story of the revolution through arts and culture interventions. It started its archiving activities toward the end of the revolution, and continues the ongoing story of beauty through the war time struggles of the Sudanese community and its diasporas.
On the 13, 14, 15 October, Belle and Co. had the privilege of working with the Sikka team to identify ways in which the project could become more sustainable in the future. Utilising the Arterial Network Arts Fundraising toolkit, the workshop covered topics such as understanding where Sikka fits in the Arts Continuum, Analysing the Arts Fundraising environment, Run through the basics of Proposal Writing as well as develop some key Fundraising Strategies for 2024 and beyond.
The workshop concluded with homework for the entire team to source fundraising opportunities within their own network and to work together to co-create future streams of income.
Over the last 5 years, Belle and Co. has been delivering unique and customised innovation workshops for Lifechoice’s Coding Academy students. Twice a year, these important sessions open up the creative potential of young learners who can practically apply their coding skills to solve a problem in their community.
Financial Literacy levels in South Africa
This year, the workshops focused on an important problem prevalent in South Africa today – lack of financial literacy skills (see also our previous hackathon here). According to a 2021 survey conducted by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the level of financial literacy in South Africa is quite low, with only 42% of the adult population being financially literate. Financial literacy is the ability to understand and know how to manage personal finances effectively.
The Hackathon
Taking place over a 2-week period, each student group had to come up with tech-based solutions to topics such as budgeting, savings, investing, credit score and more. Supported by Belle and Co facilitator, Zikhona Madubela, each group was encouraged to use design thinking skills to delve into the problem and come up with “never seen before” solutions. To support them further, the participants were also taken on a journey to explore the fascinating intersection of “Money and Psychology” with an enlightening talk by the guest speaker and financial guru, Olivia Teek.
Image: Zikhona and Olivia.
The participants were not only inspired but also motivated to take control of their financial journeys. A highlight of the hackathon was witnessing the brilliant tech-based solutions that the dynamic participants developed during the intense brainstorming and coding sessions. A total of 10 innovative Financial Literacy “tech-based solutions” were produced, each addressing different aspects of financial education and empowerment.
🏆 The Winning Solutions 🏆
🥇 Group 1: Dollar Sense 📊
The talented minds behind Dollar Sense designed an ingenious budgeting tool that empowers individuals to manage their finances effectively. This solution provides a user-friendly interface and insightful features, ensuring that users can make smart financial decisions and achieve their financial goals with confidence. 🥇
Group 2: Invest Inn 💼
Invest Inn wowed the judges with their investment educational website, providing a comprehensive platform for novices to seasoned investors to enhance their knowledge about the world of investing. With easy-to-understand resources, interactive modules, and expert insights, Invest Inn promises to be a game-changer in nurturing a generation of savvy investors.
Our heartfelt congratulations go out to the winning teams, Dollar Sense and Invest Inn, for their exceptional efforts and well-deserved victories. However, every participant contributed significantly to the success of this hackathon by showcasing their passion for financial literacy and their determination to create meaningful solutions.
A special shoutout to Olivia Teek for sharing her invaluable wisdom on the psychology behind money management, which undoubtedly inspired all the participants to think differently about their financial choices.
Lastly, we extend our gratitude to Life Choices Coding Academy for providing the perfect platform to nurture young talents and foster a culture of innovation and learning. 🙏 We are truly proud of everyone who participated and supported this remarkable event. Together, we are shaping a financially literate future, one brilliant idea at a time. Let’s continue to champion financial literacy and empower individuals to secure their financial well-being.
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:
Belle and Co workshop: Community Engagement and Cultural Outreach
Over 3 days, Belle and co delivered an intense online workshop for 4 project winners of the Goethe Institut Sudan’s Next Level Fariq Project.
As part of the project development phase, the winners need to attend a few project management workshops, including a workshop to help them develop a Community Engagement plan around their public intervention.
Our workshop included a guest speaker (Case Study) presentation by Roshana Naidoo, Project and Community Facilitator for Baz Art Public Art Festival.
Topics covered:
COMMUNITY OUTREACH : LESSONS FROM CAPE TOWN (Case Study of Baz Art Public Street Art Festival)
CROSS CULTURAL ENGAGEMENT: DESIGN THINKING
CREATING A COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT STRATEGY
Trainers:
Background: Next Level Fariq Project
Over the past 30 years, public space in Sudan has not been a place for the general public. Discourse and cultural expression shifted to private space. Reclaiming public spaces, reusing and redefining them is part of urban development initiatives and neighborhood committees. During the revolution, opinions were “”taken to the streets”” to act as catalysts for change; this process of change and transformation is ongoing.
Despite the commitment of neighborhood committees, their resources are severely limited. Although public spaces and squares exist and are places of gathering, the most visible are sometimes planned or spontaneously organized small speeches on specific topics, around which crowds of people form to listen and join in the discussion. – However, these places are not further equipped and designed. Due to the lack of equipment, the public spaces are unattractive, especially for women, young people and children, and are mainly used by men.
The NEXT LEVEL – Fariq project aims to give the neighborhoods the opportunity to make these public spaces more attractive and to make them a place of gathering for families and the wider society, especially marginalized parts. The project will support the initiative and creative ideas of the residents and the committees related to the valorization and revitalization of the public space in their neighborhood.
About Projects Winners
Up to four project ideas will be further developed and promoted through workshops, exchange and mentorship. In the first half of 2023, a five-day training on project development and project managementand a three-day training on cultural outreach and community engagementwill take place, with a total of up to 8 participants. In the second half of 2023, the implementation of the projects will take place. For this purpose, the selected project initiatives will be paid the awarded funding amounts in several installments and they thus have the opportunity to redesign the public spaces according to their interests and desires, in addition and they will be accompanied in the implementation where necessary.
The project in Khartoum 3 aims to provide a clean environment by following good health procedures that reduce pollution, and effective activities related to improving basic environmental conditions that affect the health and well-being of the residents of Khartoum 3 neighborhood. The project will train a number of young people on voluntary work and sanitation of the neighborhood environment, in addition to rehabilitating 3 triangles of sites that are converted from a garbage dump to a green place and a model of a square in the middle of the neighborhood and teaching high school students to preserve the environment.
Green Neighborhood in Shaabiya in Khartoum North – Amro Awad ( Al- Shaabiya Neighborhood Committee)
The project aims to plant fruit trees that are beneficial to the environment in the neighborhood (roads, health center, club, kindergarten, and three schools) the trees are followed up by the project team and includes training the women of the neighborhood on how to take care of the trees, the training will be by agricultural experts.
The project also includes full care of the environment for all neighborhood facilities (clubs, schools, market and health center), providing trash cans throughout the neighborhood to take care of cleanliness in the neighborhood, making monthly bazaars to provide new (productive) seedlings for all residents of the neighborhood to be planted inside homes, and finally making cultural activities and awareness in schools and the market.
Revitalization of Banat West Women Association Garden, Omdurman – Hamida Alfadil ( Banat West Women’s Association)
Due to the lack of safe spaces for women and children in residential neighborhoods and the use of most of the spaces as football fields exclusive to men, the West Banat Women Association proposed to rehabilitate the park as a space and outlet for women and children of the neighborhood, by paving and fencing it with fruit trees and using it as a club and a gathering area for the activities of the association, and a reading club by providing solar lighting when the power is cut off and also children’s play area, as well as creating an economic activity to preserve the park and ensure its continuity.
Development of Al-Hurriya Square, Khartoum North – Mohamed Kamal( Al- Mazad Neighborhood Committee)
Al- Hurriya Square project targets needy families and male and female students of Al-Hurriya School in the sports facility, where a basketball field and a volleyball field will be established, and the football field will be repaired. As for social activity, a special place will be established for families and children, and the previously established club in the neighborhood will be repaired. For needy families, three kiosks will be established as small projects for families from the neighborhood to increase income. Also, this project will be fenced with trees to create a clean environment and also to achieve safety and privacy for all. There will be consideration in the form of implementation to suit people with special needs, their toys and their needs.
To view more information on the background of the project call, see below:
The University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business approached Belle and Co. with a unique offer : to help the Solution Space deliver a 5-day Bootcamp for 35 Female Entrepreneurs from Lesotho through their partner, Sentebale.
Sentebale is an NGO founded by Prince Harry, The Duke of Sussex and Prince Seeiso of Lesotho, in 2006 as a response to the needs of children and young people in Lesotho. The name means ‘forget-me-not’ in the Sesotho language, representing a pledge to remember the most vulnerable children in the region.
As part of Sentebale’s 4th pillar of work “Education & Livlihoods”, 35 female entrepreneurs were chosen to attend the Sentebale Women’s Entrepreneurship Programme in Cape Town, at the GSB’s Solution Space. Belle and Co. together with Entreprenerdy, a Norwegian headquartered online business programme, co-delivered a 5-day bootcamp.
The main aim of the bootcamp was two fold:
!) Mentorship: Build a strong cohort of female entrepreneur leaders and mentors to inspire young women in various districts of Lesotho;
2) Business skills: Build professional business skills through exposure to business tools and resources.
The University of Cape Town (UCT) is still the best university in Africa, according to the latest QS World University Rankings.
And home to the Graduate School of Business (GSB) (pictured left),
Belle and Co. assigned two Belle and Co Associates, Thobeka Poswa and Zikhona Madubela, to design and deliver the mentorship programme, while Entreprenerdy co-delivered the business skills component of the bootcamp deploying their online platform and resources. This was a physical face-to face programme over 5 days.
In addition to the rich programme content, 3 guest speakers were also invited to speak on issues related to “Women in business”, “Social Entrepreneurship”. and “Gender-related issues”. We are so grateful for Ntombozuko, Zikhona and Otsile who shared their experience as women in business to speak to some of the issues and struggles faced by female entrepreneurs still today.
For the fourth year in a row, Belle and Co was asked to design and deliver a design-thinking workshop for Lifechoice’s Coding Academy students. This time, the ask was to design a competitive Hackathon-style training, focused on a specific theme, identified by the Academy as essential for learners: Financial Literacy.
What is a hackathon?
The word hackathon is a portmanteau of the words “hacker”, which means “clever programmer”, and “marathon”, an event marked by endurance. The concept of the hackathon, also called a hack day or hack fest, was born out of the open source (tech) community who would come together for about 24 hours to develop new software and applications. Nowadays it is used as a design-thinking methodology for all sorts of communities not only in tech.
Why does creativity thrive under constraints?
A study on creativity and constraint demonstrates that surprisingly when options are limited, people generate more, rather than less, varied solutions. When faced with scarcity, research shows that people must give themselves the freedom to use resources in less conventional ways. (Forbes.com)
Thus, the hackathon concept is a great way to simulate a time-constrained environment driven by either competition or collaboration to creatively solve problems through innovative or lateral thinking.
Lifechoices Hackathon method
For Lifechoices, we have chosen the competition-based hackathon, whereby teams are encouraged to come up with viable tech-based solutions to an aspect of the problem of Financial Literacy, using their coding knowledge, additional research and their inherent group ingenuity. The winning team receives a prize and recognition of some sort in front of an audience.
Learning objectives are to:
Stimulate creativity, innovation and solution-based thinking;
Learn how to work as a team and come up with tech-based products or services;
Understand more deeply certain aspects of Financial Literacy;
Embrace the VUCA (Volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity) world by enhancing capacities for creative problem-solving.
Practise building a tech-based solution and pitching in front of an audience.
A hackathon can be conducted in a variety of ways, using a number of activities or design-thinking methods including brainstorming, world cafe, bar camp, pitches.
All the teams were excellent, designing prototypes (some on paper, others coded and already working MVPs) focusing on the following Financial Literacy topics: Budget, Debt, Credit Score, and Savings.
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 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.
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.
The East African Creative Music Campus, is a programme offered by the Global Music Academy, and co-funded by EU Erasmus+ and Goethe Institut. There are 10 countries participating from 10 academies (includes Music Crossroads Academies). Countries covered include: Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Malawi, Sudan, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Mozambique.
Previously held in Ethiopia in 2018, this year saw the campus travel to Tanzania, and hosted by local organisation Action Music Academy.
Belle and Co’s director, Belisa Rodrigues, together with Faisal Kiwewa, CEO of Bayimba, an organisation based in Uganda, were co-facilitators for the Business Development Workshop held over 8 days during the campus. The main outcome of the training was for each Music Academy to draw up a fully fledged business plan and cashflow projection for the next 2-3 years.
The intensive training covered topics such as:
Developing your Vision, Mission and defining your values
What is your unique Value Proposition
Who are your customers and what are their needs
Market research, market analysis and knowing your competition- where do you position yourself in the market?
Risk Analysis and risk mitigation strategies
Marketing Mix and Strategic direction, objectives and implementation plans to reach your objectives
Financial projections, costing and revenue streams
The training also covered topics such as grant writing and fundraising, advocacy and pitching.
The Cultural Entrepreneurship Bootcamp was held over 4 days from 6-9 November 2018 at Hub@Goethe and was facilitated by Belisa Rodrigues of Belle and Co. and Russel Hlongwane.
The Goethe-Institut Johannesburg offers entrepreneurs a space to grow their creative businesses, this space is located within the Goethe Library-Gamebox-Hub complex. Part of the Hub programme offering is a four-day intensive Cultural Entrepreneurship Bootcamp facilitated by local South African creative and cultural experts. This offer was extended to a select number of entrepreneurs active in the creative and cultural field.
The purpose was to connect fellow start-ups and entrepreneurs, like the ones from Hub@Goethe with others operating within the South African creative and cultural space, in order to share new ideas, solutions and form key industry collaborations.
The facilitators took the 20 participants through a design thinking process, where teams had to work on real ideas and challenges. The below 4 challenges were eventually elected and worked on:
✅HMW connect small holder farmers to global markets?; ✅ HMW build copyright into Indigenous Knowledge forms?; ✅HMW enabling emerging visual artists to access markets?; ✅ HMW build an alternative free ISP using “expired data”?
Some elements covered included:
Synthesizing business ideas after finding out more about customer needs
Defining your offering, your market and the resources you need
Refining your Value Proposition for your audiences and customers
Prototyping your product or service
Financing models in the creative & cultural sectors in South Africa
Practicing to pitch and present your findings
Besides learning about 11 different business models and using role play to demonstrate these, the most important part of the programme was pitching and prototyping presented on the last day. There was huge relief and disbelief from the groups on how much can be achieved in 4 days after intense focused energy and team work!
Prototypes ranged from giant cellphone application to service role play to web platform and even an online gallery. Critical peer feedback on pitch delivery, style and storytelling was also shared.
Below a few key moments. Thank you to everyone who brought their entire person into the process. We hope you have your exit strategy sorted 😉
Thank you to Goethe-Institut Johannesburg, Belle & Co. and @Russel Hlongwane for the time, effort and support in holding space, facilitating process and providing guidance and at times input.
