Description
The Department of Social Development and Leadership for Environment and Development (LEAD) Southern Africa are collaborating to present a two-weeks training course in various parts of South Africa in 2005 and 2006 on the interplay between population, environment and development (PED) in Southern Africa and in the world, within the context of sustainable development. Six such training sessions were held in 2005-2006 and more than one hundred participants from different countries in Africa participated. The course is organised as a response to the challenge of the need to develop and implement policies, projects and programmes that transcend the traditional boundaries between disciplines, sectors, nationalities, cultures and generations. To achieve this, we aim to develop innovative thought, sensitive and creative leadership and management for sustainable development, focusing on the PED nexus.
The training course is primarily aimed at introducing participants to key population trends and their relationship to environment and development challenges, with special emphasis on the linkages in the PED nexus. It will also provide participants with the attributes and tools required to manage PED programmes, such as communication and decision-making, leadership, conflict management skills. This will enable participants to make management and leadership decisions and to conduct effective communication of information (advocacy) on sustainable development. The training course will include presentations by experts in selected priority fields of sustainable development, case studies, group discussions, group assignments and field trips to illustrate related challenges. In particular, the course will highlight the linkages between environment and development, population and environment, and population and development whilst also demonstrating the interrelationships of population, environment and development.
By conducting this type of capacity building, it is expected that PED nexus will be promoted in national, provincial and local policymaking, programming (formulation of programmes), and in monitoring and evaluation frameworks. There should be increased appreciation for the use of sustainable development indicators to monitor and evaluate the integration of PED issues in development programmes.Download course outline.
Leadership Training on the Nexus between Population, Environment and Development (PED) in Southern Africa Unit Standard
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Description
The Working for Water (WfW) Programme forms part of the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry’s initiative to combat invading alien plants and serves as a poverty relief instrument. It aims to achieve sustainable control of invading alien species in order to optimise the potential use of natural resources through a process of economic empowerment and transformation. The programme is in nature (a) a technical initiative to combat the threats to the country’s water supply posed by alien vegetation; and (b) a developmental initiative that seeks to integrate the technical initiative with a labour intensive social intervention programme in which jobs are created and skills imparted to particularly vulnerable groups in society such as women and youth in rural areas people.
The Working for Water (WfW) Programme adopted an integrated approach to development in an effort to address social equity and legislative, institutional and technical capacity issues. The programme has therefore entered into partnership with a number of stakeholders namely, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), Planned Parenthood Association of South Africa (PPASA), Pathfinder, the Department of Social Development (Chief Directorate Population and Development).
The sexual and reproductive health initiative, which is but one pillar of the programme’s integrated development approach, arose in response to unplanned and unwanted pregnancies amongst the first women employed in the initial Working for Water projects in Soetkraal, Western Cape in 1997. The partnership of this project culminated in the development and implementation of a Community Based Reproductive Health Service project in Tsitsikama and Kouga that was initiated in 1998. Since mid-1998 the project has expanded its focus to include a range of other social interventions with the intention to contribute towards sustainable integrated development. This integrated package of social interventions is both community and workplace based and aimed at enhancing the health and development of people in a holistic manner. It has a strong focus on health promotion, prevention, counselling and health, human and gender rights. Inter alia it encompasses the following:
- Directly Observed Treatment (DOTS);
- Primary health care referrals;
- Rudimentary counselling and referrals for rape, domestic violence and substance abuse victims; and
- Environmental health education.
Three different research studies undertaken during 2000-2003, informed the project’s strategic plan, as well as it’s fund raising, advocacy and IEC strategies. These studies are:
- Mid term review (MTR) of the reproductive health interventions in selected projects in the working for water programme integrated rural development projects, April 2001;
- Integrated rural development reproductive health survey, October 2003; and
- Working for water in the eye of the HIV/Aids storm. Findings of a rapid appraisal of how the working for water programme addresses issues of HIV/Aids with its beneficiaries, January 2003.
The goal of the programme was reviewed in January 2002, to address issues of integrated development as highlighted in the 2001 Mid-Term Review and the project’s 2001 Integrated Business Plan. The revised goal reads as follows: -
“To pilot, monitor, and evaluate a model of inter-sectoral partnership for selected integrated developmental interventions in identified Working for Water project sites.”
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