Civil society

This was a heated topic on our WhatsApp group earlier this month and funny enough, Stian sent a chat that a woman sitting next to him on the plane was breastfeeding…Quite funny since we have been discussing about it and even though the discussion had died down it suddenly erupted again. Well, my personal take on it at first was that women can feed anywhere, it doesn’t matter as long as they cover up and some of my mates where just not for that compromise, especially the females in the group.

International Women’s Day is celebrated annually on 8 March and in South Africa we also celebrate Women’s Day on 9 August every year. South Africa comes in at eighth place on a world classification table of women in national parliament. These are all developments that deserve to be applauded as the nation is taking strides towards the ultimate goal of achieving women’s rights. However, in the same instance it is never enough until we reach the peak of equality in all spheres, when women’s dignity and rights can be fairly observed in our nation.

Leadership is one of the most talked about, but least understood concepts in the Non-Profit field. There seems to be consensus that not all managers are leaders. There is however less consensus regarding the principle of whether managers are ‘made’ and leaders ‘born’. Both of these aspects are of importance in terms of leadership versus management in the Non-Profit sectors, and the debate is ongoing. Of even more importance is actively promoting and endorsing the debate on the need of leadership in the nonprofit sector.

By Mike Laws of InTarget

With recent news that the Wireless Application Service Providers’ Association of South Africa (WASPA) has reduced the cost of becoming an Affiliate Member for registered nonprofit organisations by 90 percent, and the fact that we’re in the annual season of giving, it’s perhaps a pertinent time to take a look at mobile marketing for non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and charities.

Forgood is an online platform (pc and mobile) that connects passionate people with needy organisations.

Do you want hundreds of thousands of people and companies to know about your work – and support it?

Do you want people to donate their goods to you? Think…. computers, building material, desks, clothes, food, etc.

Do you need people to give you their time and skills for free? Think… accounting, design work, sports coaching, teaching, etc.

Do you want an easy fundraising platform?

Use forgood to find your perfect match – and get the help you need!

In February and March 2012, TechSoup Global and its global network of partner organisations, including SANGONeT via the SANGOTeCH Technology Donation Programme, conducted a survey of NGOs around the world to better understand current cloud computing usage and future plans for cloud computing adoption.

The survey garnered more than 10 500 respondents from 88 countries.

The results are in.

Two worlds are colliding and the results can only be fun.

I am sitting in the Impact Investing conference organised by the South African Network for Impact Investing (SAII) and hosted by the University of Pretoria’s Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) and you can see it happening.

One has now lost count of the number of fraud and corruption incidents that get reported in the media - almost daily.  Most would agree that this indicates our corporate governance is collapsing, has completely collapsed or that it needs some serious re-vamp. The fact that fraud and corruption incidents do get reported, confirms that corporate governance still works – but mainly on the detective side.