Focus Areas
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The Sibona Ilanga Trust supports social and economic advancement within a 50 kilometer radius from the De Aar Solar Power plant. The Trust does this by partnering with local people and their organisations to build strong, vibrant, safe and prosperous communities that have more social and economic equality than in the past. It supports community-driven initiatives through grantmaking, capacity building and other activities.
The Trust will give priority to community organisations that focuses on the following activities:
- Market and enterprise development: The development of small businesses with a particular focus on Britstown, Philipstown and Hanover.
- Youth education and life skills: Initiatives that support young people to break out of the inter-generational cycle of poverty, with a particular focus on peer support and social re-investment by beneficiaries.
- Food: Community-based nutrition initiatives that support vulnerable people including children and elderly people, with priority given to initiatives that produce food locally and/or source their food supplies from small local suppliers. The trust provides grants to organisations who apply for support to run these activities. Grants are given through a competitive process where many groups apply and their applications are assessed in comparison to each other, normally through an open call for grant applications.
The Trust also runs its own programmes including programmes to support young people in school and out of school develop life skills that prepare them to be job-ready or ready to participate in further education and skills development opportunities, giving educational and skills development bursaries to young people, and a capacity building programme to link small local businesses into the food supply chains of community-based food distribution projects.
In addition, the trust has set up a standing disaster relief fund to be able to respond to unexpected emergencies that affect communities as they arise, which it has used to respond to urgent community needs during the COVID-19 crisis for example. It was able to provide food and blankets to those who were not able to benefit from feeding schemes which had to close and provide protective equipment to enable feeding schemes to resume their activities.
