The HCI Foundation’s early childhood development strategy is based on the African proverb, “it takes a village to raise a child”. This is based on the understanding that all children have the potential to succeed, provided they are nurtured in conducive environments.

Over the years, we have supported many organisations by delivering accredited and enrichment training to practitioners to capacitate the sector and strengthen the delivery of quality early learning. However, we believe that training practitioners alone is not enough. In order to ensure the measurable and sustainable impact of programmes, they must be combined with after-training support and mentoring practitioners, monitoring and evaluation, and involvement of other stakeholders to provide other services. Hence, we have come up with the following eight elements we believe should be in place to provide a firm foundation for children to succeed in the schooling system and later in life: parental involvement, compliance with government requirements, mentorship and support, play-based learning, promotion of good health and nutritional support, monitoring and evaluation of learning, and ECD sites establishing relationships with local primary schools and resourced environments.

We intend to ensure that all children can access quality, inclusive, transformative, play-based early learning programmes provided by skilled, qualified, passionate, nurturing and imaginative teachers. Access to quality early learning education is critical for children’s success at school and later in life.

The HCI Foundation Bursary Programme aims to contribute to the development of young people in South Africa by providing bursaries and mentoring support to financially disadvantaged and academically deserving students pursuing an Honours qualification or Postgraduate diploma at selected institutions across the country.

In addition to financial support, we offer one-on-one and group mentoring to our bursary recipients. Our mentors are experienced professionals from the HCI Group, professionals from different sectors and partner non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and alumni from the programme. Furthermore, we offer support workshops and a psychosocial support programme with The Counselling Hub and keep in touch with our students throughout the year.

We stay in contact with our former bursary recipients through the Graduate Development and Alumni Programmes. We link graduates to employment and career development opportunities through this programme and use the alumni programme as a vehicle for outreach initiatives – where we go out with them to give back to communities.

Sustainable Food Security is an extension of the HCI Foundation and the eMedia food relief initiative implemented during the hard lockdown in 2020. Whilst this intervention undoubtedly helped to fill a gap in the short term, we realised that a more sustainable initiative was necessary. The level of hunger in our society confirmed the urgent need for us to find ways to support communities in growing food on a small to medium scale. 

As a result, the HCI Foundation has begun working with a limited group of partner organisations in the food security field who can help us understand the issues at stake and who will be our implementation partners in this project.

This initiative intends to support and encourage communities to become food-secure and farmers to become self-reliant.  Read more here

Access to sufficient water is a constitutional right for South African citizens. However, many rural communities have not realised this right. They are forced to compete with livestock in accessing water from open sources, wells, and springs if those sources are not dry. Women are the most affected by the struggle to access clean water, as they must wake up early and walk for many hours to fetch water.

In many cases, water from open sources is contaminated, resulting in diseases like cholera, diarrhoea, and other infections being transmitted. Consequently, this results in many people not realising their potential.

Beyond the health implications of not having access to clean and safe water, children who miss school and local economic activities are affected. Furthermore, people cannot produce their own food.

The HCI Foundation believes that access to drinkable and safe water will improve the living conditions of many marginalised communities. Furthermore, there will be an improvement in rural communities’ academic performance and attendance, economic activities, health, and people’s potential. Ultimately, women will be relieved from all the risks they face as they ensure their families have access to water. The HCI Foundation will continue working with strategic partners that have innovative ways to improve access to clean water, leading to communities realising its potential.

Read more here