Putting Communities at the Centre Through Passion, Vision and Grit

By Fia van Rensburg, Knowledge Manager at IPASA

 

IPASA has interviewed Jeremy Maarman, Executive Director of the Initiative for Community Advancement (ICA), and founder of the Eendekuil Community Fund.

Putting Eendekuil on the map

For Jeremy Maarman, realising his childhood dream of putting the small town of Eendekuil1 on the map, has become both an achievement and an ongoing journey. He was deeply troubled when he realised that his hometown did not appear in the atlas they were using in their geography class in Grade 6 in the 90’s – long before the advent of Google Maps. He vowed to put Eendekuil on the map, and in 2011 he managed to do so (literally), when he ensured that the town was included on a map used in the annual report of the community foundation in Malmesbury2 he worked for at the time.

More recently, Eendekuil was “placed on the map” through the establishment of the Eendekuil Community Fund. “My desire, from a less literal sense, was to put Eendekuil on the map by bringing development closer to home.”

Advancing the agency of communities

Development in Eendekuil had been challenging for decades since the closure of a cheese factory about two decades ago. The factory employed close to 70% of the town’s population, and its closure had a devastating impact on the local economy, and on Jeremy’s own circumstances. He was resolute that he would do something for his community and other communities in his adult life. In 2015, he formed the Initiative for Community Advancement (ICA), which operates primarily in the Bergrivier Municipality, where it aims to stimulate local philanthropy for the benefit of the community.

The need for community-based philanthropy is illustrated by Jeremy’s comments about the inability of large-scale funding or large NPOs to reach micro communities like Eendekuil: “A lot of development aid has come to South Africa, but development has not really reached the community level. Big international and local NPOs raise money for community development in South Africa. I have lived in Eendekuil for many years, and I have never seen an example of any big NPO coming into our town. We’ve only seen for example the Department of Social Development bringing food parcels or SASSA grants and things.”

This picture of passive dependency changes dramatically when the agency and assets of a community is harnessed to meets their unique needs: “We know community foundations allow us to raise money, to really take development into our own hands, to play a role on our own as community members coming together, investing in what we call pooled funds – affiliated funds hosted by a community foundation as a fiscal host. Out of these pooled funds, we are able to advertise in our municipal area for grants to be made. This is what a community foundation is all about.”

Changing the narrative and shifting the power

Jeremy explains how community foundations like the ICA can take ownership, change the narrative and shift power in their engagement with funders, the private sector and government, through for example, the establishment of funds in specific areas, such as Eendekuil. “The idea is to raise money through events, to get funding through individual giving and to solicit funding from companies in the area. We have this pooled fund that is hosted by the community foundation – it is about raising money locally. Instead of going outside of the community asking funders to invest, we are now able to ask people in the area to co-invest with the people of Eendekuil.” It is this localised funding that enables a shift in the conversation, and the ability for a community to exert their agency, which in turn shifts power. “It’s a different conversation…”

Working with local government

When a community foundation is involved, the dynamics in partnerships also change – the community approaches partners with their own agenda, and fundraise for their own priorities,  instead of the community absorbing funding tied to the agenda of funders. Jeremy relates an example of how community agency plays out in practice. “This evening my colleagues will be going to Eendekuil, sitting down with community leaders about defining and prioritising the issues that the community wants to focus on over the next three years. In 2026, we will have local government elections. We are looking at what we can do in the build-up to the election for development in our community.”

Jeremy indicates that the Ward Councillor will be joining the meeting – he is also the Deputy-Mayor, and when the Eendekuil Community Fund was launched in September 2024, he committed R10,000 from the ward committee budget towards the fund. This triggered a personal donation of R2,000 from the Municipal Manager towards the fund.“ People are really invested in the work of ICA and also really excited about the specific things we’re doing in small communities where we create these community funds. We have raised just over  R20 000 for the Eendekuil Community Fund in the past two months.”

The work of community foundations is inevitably intertwined with local government, and while the ICA works closely with the Bergrivier Municipality, and also uses their relationship with the municipality to partner with other stakeholders that operate in the municipal area, the ICA values their independence. “We have a very interesting relationship with the municipality. We work with them closely, but  are independent of them. In fact, we don’t get any funding for example from the municipality, but we are  a strong partner of the municipality.”

Leveraging partnerships

An example of a partnership with the municipality is when the ICA was asked to assist with the  day-to-day management of a youth centre in Piketberg, which forms part of the local cement factory’s social labour plan. ICA has also hosted a skills summit in partnership with the municipality at the cement factory this year. “We brought local industry leaders and companies together to talk about skills shortages in the area.”

Leveraging this partnership to assist with youth skills development, the ICA has negotiated a win-win initiative – the municipality and the West Coast College now runs a satellite campus from the ICA-managed youth centre in Piketberg, thereby giving local youth access to TVET courses, and giving the college a footprint in Piketberg. “The West Coast has five local municipalities that makes up the West Coast district. The West Coast College has four campuses – one in all the other municipalities, except for Bergrivier.”

Through this work, Jeremy has learnt a lot about what contributes to the success of the ICA. (See the Text Box below).

Place-based development and scaling

Community foundations are about place-based development, and we asked Jeremy how he sees the conversation scaled-up solutions versus localised initiatives, against increasing calls for systems change through scaled-up initiatives. His fresh thinking on the topic is as follows: “For me, scaling is about de-centralising, reaching community members – we need to find scale in moving closer to where the people are. I would invert the pyramid – it is about going deeper, giving funding to localised efforts in communities. This involves work with people who are not even funded – community members who invest their time and skills. An organisation like ICA can act as a fiscal host on behalf of community efforts that are not formalised”.

This is how community assets – financial and assets of ’time, treasure and skill’ – can be crowded in together with external funding. This model builds social cohesion and active citizenry, in a way that is not possible through traditional grant making. According to Jeremy, the best way for funders to catalyse systemic societal change is to grow community foundations all over South Arrica. “Funders can find a lot of value in supporting community foundations that respond to issues holistically. Grants to NPOs tend to be issue-focused while community development needs a multi-sectoral integrated approach. I think very few funders know if the NPOs they fund are really responding to community-level needs. I envision a world where we have 44 community foundations – one for every district in the country.”

Looking into the future

Back to Eendekuil, where Jeremy’s passion for community started – he would like to see the Eendekuil Community Fund become an example for other communities. “We have nine small towns in the Bergrivier Municipality, and we want to establish a fund for each town. In time, we might have a challenge fund to get people from those towns to co-invest. And they can learn from the Eendekuil experience.”

Jeremy is also part of an African initiative (funded by the CS Mott Foundation) for community foundations, and through this initiative he has been able to share the work of the ICA across the continent – literally taking him from Eendekuil to Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, waving the flag for community foundations.

Factors that contribute to the success of the Initiative for Community Advancement

Establishing and growing the ICA, one of only a handful of successful community foundations in South Africa, relies on the following key principles:

  • Connectedness with, and passion for a specific community: “To run a community foundation of repute, you have to identify with a specific place. As a leader, you need to relate to and navigate between all the different constituencies in that community…sectors, races, classes of people.”
  • Building and maintaining trust relationships: “The community must trust us that we keep our promise to them. For us it is about being consistent over the past 10 years – proving that we work for the benefit of the whole community.”
  • Promoting transparency: “As soon as possible after we have had a fundraising event, we advertise a call for proposals – we make a close tie between raising funds and moving funds to the community. For our scholarship and bursary programmes we launch open calls for proposals, but only for applicants from our area.”
  • Engaging in open communication: “We share information about our grantees with the community. We host grantee award ceremonies, we video record it and publicise it, so that community members can see who are receiving grants.”
  • Participatory decision-making: “For all of our funds, we have a fund committee, comprising of community members and leaders. They are on the panel that makes recommendations on grant allocations to the Board. And the Board has always accepted their recommendations.”
  • A dedicated, involved Board: “Our Board is made up of people from the community, or people from the community who now live elsewhere.”
  • Capitalising on the ‘local diaspora’: “People who now live elsewhere come to this area over the holidays. This is when we engage with them supporting us – being on the board or using their expertise to guide our work or fund us.”

 

[ 1 ] At the time of the 2011 census, Eendekuil consisted of 379 households, and had a population of 1,530. Wikipedia calls it a ”settlement”. Eendekuil is located in the Bergrivier Municipality, which forms part of the West Coast District Municipality in the Western Cape.

[ 2 ] A larger town in the West Coast District Municipality.

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