FINDING THE BRIGHT SPOTS


Investing in the future FINDING THE BRIGHT SPOTS


This case study is adapted from Switch, how to change things when change is hard”, by Chip Heath, a professor at the Graduate School of Business At Stanford University and Dan Heath, a senior fellow at Duke University’s Centre for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE).


“In 1990, Jerry Sternin was working for Save the Children, the international organisa- tion that helps children in need. He’d been asked to open a new office in Vietnam, to help fight malnutrition. When Sternin ar- rived, the welcome was rather chilly and the foreign minister let him know that not everyone in Government appreciated his presence. The minister told Sternin, “You have six months to make a difference”.


Sternin had minimal staff and meagre re- sources and needed to read as much as he could to education himself about the mal- nutrition problem. Conventional wisdom indicated that malnutrition was the result of an interrelated set of problems: sanitation, poverty and a lack of education. Sternin felt that all this information was TBU – true but useless.


“Millions of kids can’t wait for those issues to be addressed”. If addressing malnutrition required ending poverty and purifying wa- ter and building sanitation systems, then it would never happen. Especially not in six months, with almost no budget.


Sternin had a better idea. He travelled to rural villages and met with groups of local mothers. The mothers divided into teams and went out to weigh and measure every child in their village. They then checked the results together. Sternin asked them “Did you find any very, very poor kids who are bigger and healthier than the typi- cal child?”. The women nodded and said “Co`,co`,co`.” (yes, yes, yes).


“You mean it’s possible today in this vil- lage for a very poor family to have a well- nourished child?” he asked. “Co`.co`,co`”.


Sternin then focused on searching the com- munity for the ‘bright spots” – successful efforts worth copying. If some kids were healthy despite their disadvantages, that meant that malnutrition was not inevitable. The existence of healthy children provided hope for a practical, short-term solution.


Sternin was saying – let’s not sit around analysing ‘malnutrition.” Let’s go study what these bright-spot mothers are doing.”


They spoke to dozens of people to find out what the norms were in the village. Kids ate twice a day along with the rest of their families. They ate food that was appropri- ate for kids – soft, pure foods like the high- est-quality rice.


Sternin and the mothers then went into the homes of the bright-spot kids and observed the way the homes were run. Here, moms fed their kids four meals a day (using the same amount of food as the other mothers, but spread over four feeds, not two). This helped the malnourished children to digest their food better.


The style of eating was also different. Most parents believed that their kids understood their own needs and would feed them- selves from the communal bowl. But the healthy kids were fed more actively – hand- fed by parents if necessary. They were even


encouraged to eat when they were sick, which was not the norm.


Perhaps most interesting, the healthy kids were eating different kinds of food. The bright-spot mothers were collecting tiny shrimp and crabs from the rice paddies and mixing them in with their kids’


rice.


The mothers also tossed in sweet-potato greens, which were considered a low class food.


As an outsider, Sternin never could have foreseen these practices. The solution was a native one, emerging from the real-world experience of the villagers, and for that rea- son it was realistic and sustainable.


But knowing the solution wasn’t enough. For anything to change, lots of mothers needed to adopt the new cooking habits. However, knowledge does not change behaviour and Sternin knew that telling the mothers about nutrition wouldn’t guarantee a change in behaviour. They would have to practice it, to experience the results.


The community designed a programme in which fifty malnourished families, in groups of 10, would meet at a hut each day and prepare food. The families were required to bring shrimp, crabs and sweet-potato greens. The mothers washed their hands with soap and cooked the meal together.


“Mothers were acting their way into a new way of thinking” and it was their change, something that arose from the local wisdom


Township schools can face many challenges in order to produce good results. A school which sets an exceptional example is Dendron Secondary School, situated in Bochum township, a semi-developed and remote area of Limpopo. In 2009, Dendron was only one out of six formerly black schools voted among the top 100 schools in South Africa, and boasts an almost perfect matric pass rate in the last three years. What makes this all the more remarkable is that this was achieved without the benefit of a school library or science laboratory.


Since 2008, the Old Mutual Foundation has invested in a relationship with Dendron through the Department of Education Dinaledi Schools programme, designed to partner schools with the private sector. In alignment with the Foundation’s commitment to education excellence in secondary mathematics and science, R420 000 was funded to Dendron over a 3-year period. The funding was earmarked for promoting quality teaching and learning in the fields of maths and science.


Tsakane Ngoepe, graduate of Dendon and 2010 top learner in Limpopo, attests to the difference this made to her schooling. “Dendron was different because we were always encouraged to do more than just our class curriculum. We participated actively in speech contests, sports events, science festivals and national olympiads. Our schooling continued outside of the classroom.” Tsakane went on to graduate with no fewer than seven distinctions and is now enrolled to study actuarial science at the University of Cape Town on a full scholarship from the Old Mutual Actuarial Resource Development Unit.


Building on successes such as these, an additional R500 000 was funded to Dendron by the Old Mutual Foundation to serve


as seed capital towards the


construction of maths and science laboratories, in a joint partnership with the Limpopo provincial department of education.


Transforming lives It’s this commitment to transforming lives which drives the Old Mutual Foundation’s vision of corporate social investment. “Education is crucial for the future of our country,” says Dr Pandelani Mathoma, GM Corporate


Affairs, Old Mutual, “and it’s essential that our youth are adequately equipped with maths, science and English skills to cope in a globally competitive economy.” For this reason, the Old Mutual Foundation supports schools like Dendron through multi-faceted


initiatives


that contribute to an effective schooling system. By contributing to educational transformation, we inspire young people to grow into a positive future and become fully empowered to control their own lives.


Contact the Old Mutual Foundation at 021 509 3333.


78 CHAPTER 3 | TOWARDS IMPROVED COLLABORATION


www.ed.org.za


OMMS 03.2011 T2357/TSAKANE


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