The Zenex Foundation’s approach to grant-making has completely changed as a result of Covid-19 and our response has evolved over the course of the pandemic. While our social and professional conversations early in 2020 touched on Covid-19, and we tried to keep up with news of the virus, none of us understood the extent to which it would change every aspect of our lives and work. That could have been South African optimism at play, or just the fact that there is no precedent for what the world is currently going through. However, especially because of our international connections, we soon began to appreciate that Covid-19 would have an immense impact on the education sector and that our grant-making would need to be agile and flexible in response.
The President’s speech on 15 March and the closing of schools on 18 March were the first watershed moments for us, but at that point we thought this was just going to be a temporary stage. As it was, the Department of Basic Education initially said that the break coincided with normal school holidays and would not undermine the integrity of the school year. The reality of what the sector was facing only really sunk in for us when schools stayed closed and there was broad acknowledgment that there would inevitably be a loss of academic school days – a deeply concerning consequence, especially in a country where so many children are constrained by learning backlogs. Children across the country have now lost significant time in their academic programmes, and only a small percentage of South Africa’s households have the technology and connectivity that allow them to make use of the most common solution promoted in the education sector, namely online learning. This pulling apart of the sector between those with access to learning and those without, has been further confounded by the impact of poverty on learners at risk who also lost access to the school nutrition programme during the hard lockdown. This has been a devastating triple cocktail in a sector already under immense pressure.
Like many other donor organisations, the Zenex Foundation has had difficulties responding with speed to this “new normal”. We have been struck by the fact that that the education non-profit sector has been much more agile and innovative than funders generally have been. For Zenex, which typically engages at length on strategic choices; consults with stakeholders; designs, develops and funds multi-year projects; relies on growing an evidence base to inform its work and works in partnership with a range of stakeholders, it was initially extremely difficult to shift into immediate, risk-taking and agile responsiveness.
How did we proceed? We were guided then, and continue to do so, by our grant-making approach of in the first instance being evidence-based and secondly working in partnership. But we also developed a Covid-19 response in early June, one that has stayed true to our Strategy 2025 while at the same time responding specifically to the pandemic.
An evidence-based approach: In order to develop our evidence base during Covid-19, we have funded several research initiatives to learn more about the impact of the virus. We were one of the funders of the JET Research Bootcamp, #openupyourthinking, which sought to understand the pressures being placed on education systems by the virus as well as to identify possible solutions and innovations. We also funded Social Surveys to do a representative household telephonic survey in the first period of school closure to understand better the pressures on parents as well as their capacity to assist their children whilst at home. We funded the tracking of education of trends on social media, where social media sentiment analysis showed, among other things, that the effect of lockdown on learning was the top issue expressed during lockdown and that the issue of #schoolsreopening trended second only
to #COVID19 across all social media. We are now carrying out a study in deep rural Eastern Cape where we are piloting a project focused on teacher communication with parents about learners’ work while they study at home. We are exploring the effectiveness of different channels, the take up by parents, the work completed by learners and other challenges being experienced. This is important research because we know parents play a huge role in supporting learning at home and we need to find workable solutions for parents in rural contexts. In addition to the research enumerated above, we have also kept ourselves informed through reading, attending webinars and engaging with other stakeholders.
Partnership: We undertook a survey with our existing partners on the impact of Covid-19 on not only their organisations but also the implementation of their projects. We have also focused on working in collaboration with a co-ordinated response, and to this end we have funded a series of engagements to promote learning and collaboration with IPASA.
A Covid-19 strategy: We developed a Covid-19 response for our board in early June and ensured it remained aligned within our existing Strategy 2025. Our goal was to stay true to our strategy while at the same time responding to the crisis. We divided our projects into three categories and considered the financial implications of each:
i. Projects where implementation could go ahead and which were not reliant on being in schools. These were research or materials development projects or ones which were in the stage of initial project planning.
ii. Projects in schools which could not continue, nor had to be postponed. This was the hardest part of the exercise we undertook as we had to cancel contracts. Our aim was to be responsible as donors and to ensure, as much as possible, the sustainability of the education non-profit sector. We provided operational funding to all projects until the end of July and we also funded work that was being done in place of school-based projects.
iii. Projects in development which could go ahead and needed tweaking, given the Covid-19 pandemic, before being taken to our board.
b. Following the above exercise, which we carried out in consultation with our partners, our board approved a strategy and budget envelope for new Covid-19 projects. This focused on three areas:
i. Working in schools to focus on recovery
ii. Connecting the home-school nexus
iii. Thought leadership
On reflection we could have done things differently. In the first instance, we should have communicated immediately and effectively with partners and beneficiaries. Some of the larger non-governmental organisations we support approached us at once and we gave them permission to use our funding flexibly. It would have been better to allow all partners this latitude. We could also have allocated small once-off grants to beneficiaries to allow them to undertake innovative actions immediately and on the ground, even if not in education – it is our view that both urgent initiatives as well as longer-term ones, require support in the pandemic. But most of all we should have worked at a faster pace – a speedy response is more important than a perfect one. Going forward, we commit to regular reflection on our actions. The future is unclear but our ability to adjust to its demands is improving.