Men at the Side of the Road

Posted on November 12, 2005 by Jean Barker

The phrase “I’m going out quickly to pick up some guys” will be familiar to many South Africans whose parents manage their own minor building or major gardening projects.

The next step works like this: Dad departs with an empty bakkie and returns an hour later with an assortment of men riding in the back.

These men are most probably the men at the side of the road. They gather at well known pick-up points on the side of the road from Monday to Saturday, and wait in the hope of getting casual labour work from builders or the public. The men’s labour is cheap and casual – a problem for them. For the employers, the hitch was that the men they hired were often unreliable or unskilled. Some those who claimed to be bricklayers or gardeners and so on were only saying they had the skills required in a desperate attempt to get a day’s work.

In 2005, with unemployment now at 40% and rising, the number of men standing at the side of the road waiting for work has only grown. Hard figures are hard to come by, but it’s estimated that, on a daily basis, about 200 000 men gather in groups on curbs across South Africa in the hope of temporary relief from joblessness. They freelance with only their labour to sell.

But things are changing for the better for some of these men through the work of a fairly new but fast growing organisation called, literally, Men at the Side of the Road (MSR for short).

How MSR was set up

The idea of providing training, tools and backup for men at the side of the roadway sounds like an obvious project idea for one of South Africa’s non-governmental organisations, but MSR was only set up about three-and-a-half years back, when Charles Maisel hit on the idea.

Charles studied Economics at university. He credits his strong mentors with nudging him in the direction of the organisational development field. Though the MSR project has a national scope (it boasts more members in Johannesburg than anywhere else) the man who started Men at the Side of the Road is a born and bred Capetonian who is still based in South Africa’s mother city, where he lives with his family.

Since graduating 12 years ago, and before MSR existed, Charles gravitated towards the developmental business rather than profit-taking. His work focused on developing models for social upliftment enterprises, or as he puts it: “…looking at big problems and trying to develop bigger solutions.”

Some previous projects included developing housing schemes, addressing the crucial issue of domestic violence, setting up big grassroots savings schemes and introducing alternative retail models in the townships. He has assisted in launching The Great Ideas Company, which looks at youth creativity and innovation in youth entrepreneurship. And he’s done a lot of research into unemployment and related issues.

Charles started MSR when he noticed a trend while working on other projects over the years. “Every year there are just more men standing on the side of the road, waiting for jobs. As the unemployment rate grew, the number of people beside the road grew and this was countrywide – in small towns as well as in big urban areas.”

Extreme weather conditions, exploitative working conditions, bad pay or non-payment of wages, harassment by police and low skills and educational levels are just some of the net of problems that threaten to trap casually employed labourers, who range in age from 16 to 55 years. Charles began a project to investigate ways to improve their lot.

“We spent a year talking to the guys on the side of the road, and then we got a bit of funding and we slowly built the model to what it is today.”

Initial European-based financial supporters included a Catholic-based funder called Catholic Welfare and Development (CWD), where Charles had an existing connection, and local corporate funders, among them the Pick ‘n Pay-linked Ackerman Foundation.

However, getting money wasn’t a straightforward process, Charles says.

“Even though we were dealing with unemployment, a big problem was that our target group was 99 percent male. Funders only wanted to fund women and youth.”

The trick was to get funders to realise how the high level of male unemployment negatively affects the lives of all those linked to them. In South Africa’s often patriarchal society where men’s pride is often (rightly or wrongly) tied to the idea of them being the head of the household and the chief breadwinners there is great shame in being unemployed.

“A lot of men don’t actually cope with the whole issue of not being able to work. I think it’s just one of those very masculine things. And that’s why they go and stand on the side of the road every day. Because going to the side of the road is like having a job when you don’t have a job,” Charles explains.

Gradually, funders came round to the holistic benefits of the project. And yes, the extremely rising unemployment rate has certainly helped MSR argue their case for making casual workers’ lives easier.
Successes and failures and compromises

So what level of success has Men on the Side of the Road had in improving peoples’ lives?

“Our initial objective was to make the people on the side of the road visible, instead of seeing millions of cars just driving past. And I think we’ve achieved that in a big way,” says Charles. “We get national government support now as far as funding goes, and the public where we operate do know about us.”

The workers themselves are also getting to know about the organisation, though there is a long way to go. About 20% of the 200 000 men – about 40 000 men – who stand at the side of the road every day at 500 sites (170 in Johannesburg) have been reached by MSR, in just over two years’ work. UNISA is currently completing a project that provides more reliable figures which will assist MSR further.

The Tools Project collects used tools from nurseries and from the public. In a year, Men at the Side of the Road collected 50 000 tools around South Africa and created a library of tools. Workers borrowed tools, and no longer waited empty-handed. The project also raised much- needed public awareness.

The organisation has managed to deal with the police harassment problems and negotiate a truce so that the men waiting for work are no longer treated like vagrants.

Various small projects rather than one grand scheme seek to exploit gaps in the employment markets, or to semi-formalise the fulfillment of existing needs.

For example, Uncle Bob’s will clean you out – with your consent of course. If you’re moving house, or just need your garage cleared, Uncle Bob’s will send a team of men to remove the unwanted and unused stuff stored in your garage. Everything there will be sold for funding or added to the tools library. And when did you ever do anything with it, apart from trip over it on the way to your car door in the morning?

Training programmes have made a huge impact and are linked to a placement programme. Fees charged for placements provide additional income for the project, making it more sustainable.

To ally the general public’s fears of hiring strangers and to increase the men’s chances of getting work, members can join a casual workers’ federation called the “Masiphumelele Unemployed Federation” which is about 800-odd members strong and growing. Members carry ID cards and are subject to some security checks. In addition, MSR puts together qualified teams – a building team for example – who come with their own supervisors.

Men at the Side of the Road – despite initial ethical issues that sponsors may have had about sponsoring only men – have won numerous international awards for their work. Just to list a few: The AAG fund (United Nations) award for the best pioneering project in the worlds, as well as other smaller awards. They are currently shortlisted for the Shell Global Challenge for the Top Global Project Award, as well as for the Global Development Network’s top project award.

Of course, not every idea is a good idea, no matter how much sense it makes on paper. MSR initially intended to build toilets and shelter at the points where men waited for work. Neither residents nor council were amenable. Charles is quick to acknowledge the mistake of trying to set up permanent waiting places without the support of council.

Figuring out where to fit in with the labour markets has also been difficult. Although the MSR’s Masiphumelele Unemployed Federation help negotiate temporary wage and employment conditions, they are not aligned to COSATU or other labour unions. As Charles puts it, “We could never be allies. Our guys want their guys’ jobs!” But MSR’s people do meet with COSATU, and mutually support each other where possible without officially being affiliates.

Client experiences

Judy Lovemore, a freelance landscaper or “garden stylist” hired guys from Men at the Side of the Road’s gardening team to help her with the revamp of a neglected garden in Rondebosch, Cape Town. She was hugely impressed with the teams of four people provided each day. As she supervised the men herself, she noticed that each day, at least one of the men had been on the project previously, so that she didn’t have to explain the job from scratch. She also commented that MSR sent a mix language team with at least one English speaker, to make her life easier as well as to help the men learn language skills on the job. She also felt safe working with the men.

“For me to be alone in a garden with a bunch of men that I don’t know can be quite threatening.” She explains. “To literally stop on the side of the road… I would never do it. Men at the Side of the Road give me a facility that otherwise I wouldn’t have.”

Not everyone interviewed was as positive as Judy was. Susan Pardew, managing director of Greenways Hotel, hired MSR’s gardening team recently. The team accidentally weeded out grass that had carefully been planted and nurtured between paving stones near the swimming pool. “It’s a mess”, Susan says.

However, because MSR did good follow up and has promised to investigate and rectify the problem, Susan says she wouldn’t rule out hiring them again. She admits she didn’t deal with the team herself, and that they may not have been properly briefed by her staff. She says she would make sure the men were supervised by someone from the hotel in future.
Organisational growth – the way forward

Men at The Side of the Road have no plans to launch Women at the Side of the Road – though women may join MSR’s worker training schemes if they wish to.

Men at the Side of the Road currently employs 20 people permanently. About a third of these people were originally Men on the Side of the Road. Charles sees the ultimate goal of the organisation as becoming sufficient within itself, so that he can let go and move on to new projects.

New leadership development has already begun.

Vuyisile Dyolatana is one staff member who’s gone from unemployment to a steady job running MSR’s gardener training course. He met up with field worker Ian Veary while waiting and hoping to be picked up. “I worked for a landscaping company, so I have a lot of experience,” he says. He also helps get men standing on the side of the road involved in training.

“Many are interested,” Vuyisile says. “We change their lives. My life also changed. Two years ago I had no job. Now I am permanent. I am working full time, and helping other people.”
Donate, assist, or make contact

Charles Maisel: 072 4876775
Fundraising, contact Jocelyn Freed 083 7082569
Go to the project’s website for more information or to hire workers.

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Private schools for the people

Posted on August 17, 2005 by Julia Frielinghaus

Many poor parents across the country are finding it impossible to get their children into State schools. Sometimes it is because they can’t afford the various costs associated with sending a child to school. Quite often, however, it is because all the schools in the immediate vicinity are already tightly packed.

The obvious answer for many parents has been to set up their own schools. Most often this amounts to one unemployed or retired teacher, with children crammed into a crumbling building or under a tree.

In the informal settlement of Sunrise Park near Rustenburg in the North West province, 298 children who were refused entry into the nearby Paardekraal Secondary School are now taught in a dilapidated Zionist church. The Phuthaditjaba Community Development School has only one room, the roof leaks, and the windows are broken, but the unpaid teachers are driven to continue in the knowledge that without their efforts, the children would be getting no education at all.

Sometimes these unofficial schools have, despite the precariousness of their existence, managed to procure the facilities and resources to teach properly. The Peoples’ Power Secondary School in Khayelitsha near Cape Town, for example, provides an education to 1 800 students who have been excluded from other schools.

The school operates out of the Andile Nhose Community Centre, so it has access to reasonable facilities and the children are at least not exposed to the wind and rain. It has also benefited from donations of computers and other equipment. The 18 teachers, however, have received no payment since the school opened at the beginning of the year.

Like most of these parent-initiated schools, neither the Peoples’ Power Secondary School nor the Phuthaditjaba Community Development School is registered. This is not for want of trying; both have made numerous attempts to become formally recognized. But the response from the authorities has been far from enthusiastic. Both of these schools have been told that they will not be registered and the children must be accommodated elsewhere. Exactly where, nobody is saying.

In fact, the biggest hurdle facing these self-starter schools is not finding teachers or pupils or premises, but obtaining that piece of paper that gives them official sanction to operate.

It is up to provinces to determine the requirements for registration as an independent school, or to make a non-public school a public one. The requirements tend to be fairly rigorous on issues like having formal premises, which makes it enormously difficult for a group of poor township parents, for example, to comply.

Obviously there is a big enough problem with fly-by-night schools that education departments must be cautious about registering schools with no record. But the example of these two schools shows us that, amongst the scoundrels, there are many constructive and genuine efforts.

It is also clear that laws governing the setting up of independent or state-aided schools and the officials who enforce them tend to assume villainry, rather than looking at the specifics of the case.

These two schools, battling against the odds to give education to children who would otherwise be on the streets, show that it is time for an overhaul of laws and attitudes. South Africa will solve its education problem not through officialdom, but through the multiplier effect of countless individual initiatives by ordinary South Africans.

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Success on a shoestring

Posted on August 12, 2005 by Julia Frielinghaus

Down-town Port Elizabeth is neither prosperous nor glamorous. Buildings are bedraggled and many have been abandoned. Businesses look precariously shoe-string. So it would not perhaps seem that a private school, with more than two thousand pupils in immaculate blue uniforms, a full brass band, and a routine 100% pass rate, would find a home here.

But Edu-College, a private school which runs out of several old office blocks under the N2 highway in central Port Elizabeth, has done exactly that.

In 1994, Lilian Niemann was looking for an opportunity to further some research for a Masters degree and earn some money at the same time. The market for private schooling at the upper income level was saturated.

So she began what started as a few Saturday enrichment classes for school children, as part of an already existing franchise.

After eight years of hard work, this little side-line business has grown enormously; it now includes, as well as the enrichment classes, a pre-primary, primary and high school, as well as a post-school college offering hotel management, information technology and tourism training.

Three years ago the High School achieved a 100% pass rate for the first time. It has done so every year since then. But in addition to the core curriculum, Edu-college provides the kind of rounded education that is hard to find, at any price, in South Africa’s poorest province. There are no Astroturf sports fields, but just about everything that is important to the development of self-motivated and confident young adults is available.

The brass band is run by a former member of the Cape Town symphony Orchestra. As part of the Soccer School of Excellence programme run by the University of Port Elizabeth, there are 16 junior international soccer players amongst the pupils on full bursaries. There is a wide range of other sports available, and a computer laboratory, and several students participate in Junior City Council.

The school gets a whiff of subsidy funding from the provincial government, amounting to around R400 000 a year, less than half of which comes from private sponsorship.

By far the biggest source of income is from school fees, although these are low by independent school standards. For the primary and high schools, fees range from R450 to R490 per month.

The importance of fee income means that much time and energy is devoted to ensuring a reliable flow of money. Marketing is an intensive and highly planned operation. The results are now starting to be seen, with a growing waiting list for the High School programme in particular. Prompt payment is ensured by a bar-coded entry system that bars those without a good reason for non-payment.

Edu-College has made a place for itself in a market characterized more by fly-by-night scams than quality education. There are few examples to follow, so its growth has been the result of much floundering in the dark and single-minded dedication. But its survival so far is a happy indication that good private education in South Africa need not be about privilege and exclusivity.

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CIDA leads the way

Posted on August 12, 2005 by Neil Horne

In South Africa, tertiary education is generally perceived to be the preserve of the privileged (or those lucky enough to earn a bursary). In addition, the university enrolment of black South African students has shown a clear skew towards the social sciences, a stain on the curriculum vitae of the serious job seeker. A smart new city campus is challenging these patterns.

The Community and Individual Development Association (CIDA) was formally launched in November last year. It provides a unique model for the provision of access to quality tertiary education to learners from disadvantaged communities.

At the heart of CIDA’s model is partnership, most notably with local industry. There are three legs to this. Firstly, private companies and institutions play a leading role in the design and presentation of CIDA’s curricula. A direct consequence of this is that the students’ employability is enhanced, as likely employers have a hand in ensuring that the skills imparted are relevant to the industry’s current requirements.

A second benefit of the partnership model is that it exploits the willingness of companies to make donations in kind. Thus the school is housed on the former head office of Invest Bank, courteousy of the bank. Amalgamated Applicances donated the appliances used to facilitate multimedia presentation of course material, and accounting firm Price Waterhouse Coopers present the accounting course.

These companies benefit as they’re first in line to cherry pick its promising graduates. Says Wolfgang Jakob, CEO of CIDA-partner T-Systems South Africa, “We plan to equip individuals with the necessary expertise based on the needs of the ICT market”.

A consequence of this second component is that the costs of tertiary education are slashed for CIDA’s learners. CIDA estimates that its Bachelor of Business Administration – the fully accredited course which is its sole offering – costs 90% less than an equivalent from other commercial tertiary schools.

A third element of CIDA’s approach is its practical focus. This was mentioned in respect of industry involvement in course design, but it extends further, to the conduct of all aspects of course administration. Students are involved in administration of the campus, and have an active role to play in admissions and other management aspects. Entrepreneurship is a compulsory course component (jobs not being guaranteed) and students are schooled in the drafting of business plans. Plans are afoot to set up a venture capital fund to finance promising student enterprises.

Currently CIDA’s sole campus is in the populous Gauteng province in the North of the country. This offers proximity to learners from other African countries, and gels with the school’s mission of participating in the continental renewal programme dubbed NEPAD. In line with this goal, the school has pledged to reserve 10% of its scholarships for learners from other African Union member states.

This school has caught the attention of observers worldwide and won kudos for its innovation. The World Economic Forum bestowed its coveted Global Leader for Tomorrow award on CIDA founder, South African accountant Taddy Blacher. The Commonwealth Secretariat has appointed CIDA to serve as a Regional Centre of Excellence in Higher Education, and the school won the Grand Prix award at last year’s Age of Innovation competition, honouring it as the most innovative organisation in South Africa.

Based as it is on voluntary initiative, the school is eager to engage with parties interested in helping it achieve its objectives. In this regard please email the school.

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Lessons from the Third World

Posted on August 8, 2005 by James Tooley

James Tooley writes in The Spectator of 18 January 2003
Please select the article “Lessons from the Third World” from the link indicated. Thanks.

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