BUMB’INGOMSO - LEADERSHIP PROGRAMME

The Small Projects Foundation was awarded the rights to implement, on behalf of the DG Murray Trust, a highly ambitious intervention dedicating to bettering the lives of Young Women and Girls within Buffalo City Metro.  The intervention is implemented under the banner of Bumb’Ingomso.  The Small Projects Foundation is at the centre of the intervention, responsible for the Behaviour Change and Communication component.

Bumb’Ingomso is a project of the National Department of Health funded by the Federal Republic of Germany, through KfW in partnership with the DG Murray Trust. The project offers youth-centred multifaceted interventions, which focus on behavioural, structural and social issues. These are designed to create an ecosystem that supports young women and creates a sense of imminent possibility.

The combination of these interventions is meant to accelerate impact and result in outcomes such as adoption of healthy behaviours, retention in school, young people making informed choices that are beneficial to their wellbeing and support structures that help young people to participate meaningfully in activities within and beyond their communities.

The project started in the second quarter of 2017.

Objectives:

• Build the aspirations of teenage girls and young women through establishing an aspirational leadership network that builds agency and connects to opportunities
• Mentoring of young women in leadership and designing and running community projects which will include: club organisation, motivational and healthy sexuality programmes
• Develop linkages between young women in the BI target group and other women in the community, business, government and broader civil society in order to inspire and provide mentorship
• Mobilise and engage communities in addressing the drivers of the risk tolerance and shaping protective social norms
• Capacitate Life Orientation teachers in identified, willing and committed schools to improve delivery of SRH education
• Create and maintain a response mechanism to respond to demand created through community engagements

Successes:

To date we have in excess of 8000 members registered in the network.

• As part of building a team to ensure sustainable and successful rollout of the programme, we have recruited a group of stipend receiving mentors who are drawn from the various wards we operate in. To date, we have 24 such mentors who have been capacitated and deployed in the communities to strengthen and grow the programme implementation reach
• We contributed to the development and launch of a youth magazine called, YAKHA.  The magazine is targeted at young people of BCM and provides them with a platform to tell their stories as well as feature up and coming young people doing great things for themselves and their futures within the BCM area.  The magazine run is 40,000 copies and is produced quarterly.  The SPF team is responsible for distribution of the magazines through its community networks.