A Success Story: The Etafeni Trust Fit for - SAfAIDS

1. Context
1.1 Background: Documenting Success Stories in Sexual and Reproductive
Health Responses
In the southern African region a significant amount of work is being done by
community based organisations and their partners in supporting communities with
knowledge and skills to reduce sexual and reproductive health (SRH) vulnerabilities.
Many of these interventions are changing lives and infusing a heightened sense of
empowerment and coping capacities amongst the beneficiaries they reach. Much of
this work, however, remains poorly documented and poorly disseminated.
By documenting interventions that have been demonstrated to have a positive
impact - strategically sharing successes and approaches (the ‘how’ and ‘what’) used
to gain success – other organisations can learn, adapt and replicate the successful
interventions and benefit communities in their constituencies. A documented success
story increases the body of available knowledge for reference on what works and
how it works. It provides a basis for funding agents and programme managers to
inform resource allocation and mobilisation. Documenting a success story and sharing
it widely also provides inspiration and motivation for those involved in making the
intervention a success, and raises the visibility of their commendable efforts.
A success story can be described as:
“a story illustrating a positive change, by sharing the “who, what, where, why, when,
and how” of an individual, household, or community in a story that represents the case
of different individuals, households, or communities targeted by the programme”.
The Etafeni Trust was identified for documentation as a success story based
on evidence gained within several platforms on interventions addressing SRH
vulnerability of young women in the past two years. Amongst its multi-purpose
community interventions, the Etafeni Trust launched its Fit For Life, Fit for Work
Programme in 2007 (replicated from a similar programme in India) which has
since grown rapidly and shown positive impact on the lives of those it reached.
Eight times a year, groups of twenty young adults (60% young women) spend four
weeks - all day, every day - looking at themselves, their life stories, their goals,
their values. There is a lot of work done around sexuality - and space is offered for
the young people to articulate, perhaps for the first time, what it is they want for
themselves - not what culture, peer pressure or the consumer society determines.
After the participants graduate from the “Fit for Life” course, they move into work
skills training: English, computer skills, driving lessons and many other work-related
courses. They are then helped to find work, and for the past three years, Etafeni
has achieved an 80% success rate in placing graduates in either paid employment,
stipended internships or tertiary studies with a bursary 1 . The programme has been
replicated in various other centres in South Africa and this is one testimony to its
workability.
This document outlines the ‘how and what’ that makes the Etafeni Trust programme a
success story.
1 http://www.etafenitrust.org/FitForLife
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