Together Towards Tomorrow
On Friday, 11 November 2016, We are Durban partnered with 10 organisations from Durban to present the Together Towards Tomorrow conference. The heart behind the conference was to bring hope and life to the heads of organisations that Durban desperately needs to function to capacity. We have so much need in Durban but we also have the organisations and infrastructure in place to deal with that need. Capacity needs to be built within the organisations so that more people benefit from their services.
In the 6 years of We are Durban serving the servants of Durban a pattern has developed in what the NPO’s have been asking for assistance in. We decided that the best way we can serve these NPO heads was to bring them together and input into their lives through professional culture shifters. These professionals were the very talented Simon Kozlowski (thirtyseven), Mthoko Shange (Imbizo Foundation) and Abonga Nkwelo (Apple Tree Culture Catalysts) who spoke into Organisational Structure, The Courage to take my organisation forward and Brand Identity respectively.
We had filmed case studies of organisations getting these topics right. These examples were iThemba Lethu, Buyisithemba and uMinathi. We also allowed the audience to ask tough questions of all these people and also some very large and well known organisations, namely: LIV-Village, Hillcrest Aids Centre, and Domino Business. To encourage making the learning personal, we held table discussions which were facilitated by volunteer Social Workers arranged by UNISA’s Bright Site (who place social work students in the final year of their studies).
76 people attended representing in excess of 50 organisations.
The event was manned by volunteers and co-ordinated by Jet Events and Teraza Blaire. A big thank you to our Amashova team whose sponsorships went towards this event and to Style Eyes for the donation that paid for half of the costs!
We look forward to our next one, as this was, from all the feedback we received, a great success!