1. Contribution to
Kwanda expert meeting III
Dr. Gavin Andersson
Seriti Institute, South Africa

2. Why Kwanda? (2007)
♦ Development issues are linked and poverty makes them
worse.
They must be tackled together…
♦ It makes sense to work with individuals, but this is not
enough. Some solutions to ‘individual’ problems require
wider support and shifts in culture
♦ Policy changes are key but they can leave out the most
important players – the community, the people.
♦ Community development needs effort from all actors

3. what change from
developmental action ?
• Change in activity, at the individual level
and at a social scale
=> to improve the quality of life
• Change in culture : “the way we do
things around here”

4. Kwanda Reality TV:
Activity Theory and Community Psychology
• What is the Organization Workshop?
• Why was this used for the Kwanda Learning Camp?
• How are its principles applied in community organizing?

5. Scoping the Organization Workshop
Opportunities: What opportunities are there
for work process that can in turn trigger an
ORGANIZATIONAL PROCESS in the community?

6. The Opening Ceremony

7. The Participants

8. The Director’s Speech

9. Two enterprises
• Facilitators’ Enterprise (the Crew) creates the
conditions for learning by the Participants’
Enterprise (the Team)
Education theory:
a) Zone of Proximal Development
b) Learn by discovery and co-construction
• There is ongoing ‘scaffolding’ during the OW

10. Freedom of Organization
• If you suggest models of organization, or hand over
a running organization, you stop participants from
learning about organization
• Learning about organization comes from trying
something in practice, and seeing where changes
are needed.
• Ideas for change can come from some participants’
previous work experiences, or from something
learned in the lecture.

11. Working Capital

12. “The Object teaches”
• Tools, materials, equipment etc suggest certain
activity
• Shift of awareness/conciousness through
activity.
• The enterprise becomes an object of learning,
each person becomes an object of learning

13. Tools

16. The Lectures

17. Common concepts & language
Community development or enterprise development
is helped if participants
share a common narrative, (a meta-narrative)
work with the same concepts
Understand causes of difficult behaviour
and are in agreement about the tools and methods
to address issues.

19. R
The theory of organization
A history of organization, and insights for today
Social Psychology: combating bad habits
Tools to manage the Enterprise
Lectures content, and other training
Criticism & critical reflection
Work Analysis & Planning
Financial management
Naive, Critical & Organizational Awareness
Vocational training
Contracting & costing
Work organization & record-keeping
Vocational skills (building, agric, etc)
Financial management
Produce Memorandum of Workshop
Social Challenges
HIV Prevention and Care
Care of Children & vulnerable people
“Phuza Wize”; addressing alcohol abuse
Early Childhood Development
Sports Coaching

25. 1,8km of pipeline

27. Tank stand

45. Some results after 6 Weeks
• Piggery – 10 pedigreed sows (parent piggery) 10jobs
• Poultry – free range eggs (parent stock; day old chicks) 10jobs
• Nursery – for 13 hectare Moringa production, 80jobs
• 5 hectare of essential oils, 4 Hectare vegetable garden , 30jobs
• Sewing enterprise 30jobs
• FET College: computer classes -30 students every two weeks
Sewing, brick-making, building and basic agricultural courses
• Processing & Marketing coop (renovated clinic) 10jobs
• Early Childhood Development course for 25 practitioners
• Historic graveyard fenced, old church transformed into a Retreat Centre
• Livestock & smallstock association e.g. Goat production
• Household surveys (LED strategy, HIV prevention & identification of vulnerable
children & Plugging the Leaks Survey)
• 8km fencing*; 1,8km water pipeline; water weir at river

46. De Morais: Capacitation
a) “Not possible to learn to ride a bike if there is no bicycle to ride
on” => learning the whole job, the whole process…
b) Skill + disposition to achieve something AND adjust future
behaviour in the light of the learning from this experience
In other words:
You can only learn about a complex system (like a cooperative
enterprise, or a community) by working with the whole system
not small parts of it.
Part of the capacitation process is the formation of attitude,
including ‘ownership’ of ones own learning.
Key to the future is a method for learning from experience.

47. Process of the OW

48. After the Learning Camp:
• Teams try to make community look better, feel better and work
better. Cameras present; national competition
• Organization methods from Learning Camp are tried at home
• Coaches in each community; relate to Team in same way as at Camp
• Focused tasks : the silkscreen tender, action for children…
• Real life throws up unpredictable challenges and different responses
• Question: how do we keep the whole community focus rather than
organize as a Team? Community radio, newspapers, cultural groups?
• Question: how can critical reflection happen across the community?

49. What have we learnt?
• When communities organize on their own behalf, it is easier for
government to deliver.
• The condition for growth in the local economy is autonomous
organization, and the confidence of people to act.
• Confident and active citizens are more prepared to discuss HIV
and act to change their behaviour.
• It is not easy to maintain community-wide organization