After help from ALI SA’s Venture Workshop, HEAL SA creator Mpadi Makgalo is ready to redefine access to mental health support in South Africa, while Fixlocal’s Garth Japhet will help you fix your neighbourhood.
HEAL SA founder Mpadi Makgalo (ALI Class XI), has always believed in her venture and knew it stood a great chance of succeeding. She is more sure of victory now that she’s participated in the newly launched Africa Leadership Initiative South Africa’s (ALI SA) Venture Workshops. She’s since received support for various aspects of her venture from the ALI SA fellowship. “The new ALI Venture Workshop has given me a much clearer direction for moving forward, and I am confident that my venture idea is now significantly stronger.”
The ALI SA Venture Workshops have been created to ensure Fellows have the best chance at succeeding with their ventures. While Fellows show demonstrable expertise in leadership and have business acumen, the ALI Venture workshops are designed to provide peer-to-peer support, brainstorming and feedback on their venture ideas by harnessing the expertise that exists within the fellowship.
Mpadi has run organisations successfully over her 18-year career, the most recent one being Harambe Advisory Services. Mpadi’s new project has a strong focus on South Africa’s black women and youth – many of whom are often underserved and find little to no assistance with mental health support. Unicef’s poll in October 2023 showed that 60% of South Africa’s youth need access to mental health help. HEAL SA’s objective is to provide free mental health counselling to the youth, particularly university students. Recent statistics among first-year South African university students show that nearly half (46.4%) mentioned having thoughts about suicide, while over a quarter (26.5%) reported planning their suicide and over 8% reported attempting suicide. These alarming figures demonstrate the huge need for mental health support to the youth.
For her venture workshop, a number of expert Fellows who are working in the health, media, community and mental health space, gathered to discuss and provide feedback to help Mpadi refine her initiative. The robust workshop included analysing HEAL SA’s position with donors, how to access funding resources, its communications strategy and streamlining its internal operations.
HEAL SA is also benefiting from the expertise of an ALI Fellow who is a leading media expert, to develop a communications strategy on how to convey messages to the public and communities on how to deal with the stigma of mental illness – a large barrier for most people struggling with mental illnesses – and advising people about accessing HEAL SA’s services.
“Initially, I thought that the Venture Workshop was a scary process. It’s like exposing your baby to high-level thinkers and you’re wondering if they’re going to like it. But they were the ones telling me I’m doing a great job. That support and guidance was so affirming and I value the power of the ALI network where I can access Fellows with great expertise,” said Mpadi. She has subsequently been interviewed on various TV news and radio channels to create awareness of HEAL SA and has an international donor in the pipeline. Mpadi was also a lead speaker at the 2024 Resnick Aspen Action Forum, talking about mental health in the youth.
Garth Japhet (ALI Class X), whose new project Fixlocal will strive for solutions to South Africa’s challenges, felt the same sense of affirmation. Garth is no new entrant to South Africa’s brainstrust. His initiatives, “Soul City Institute”, “For Good” and “Fathers Matter” have created life-changing interventions that have made a significant impact on highlighting awareness and implementing programmes to address social issues in South Africa.
Fixlocal allows South Africans to be inspired by what other communities have done on a local level to address their service delivery problems; from potholes and crime to water outages. Working with other organisations like “Jozi My Jozi”, “Joburg Crisis Committee” and OUTA’s residents associations, the Fixlocal platform will use AI to integrate into Whatsapp for easy information dissemination to communities. Users are given tips on how to address their service delivery challenges with local government officials by providing them with the official channels and templates to report and follow up on requests. In addition, Fixlocal will share information of examples of communities that have taken up the responsibilities that local government is supposed to fulfil, such as crime watch blocks, cleanup operations of suburbs and the business community coming together to keep neighbourhoods clean and safe.
ALI SA hosted a Venture workshop for Garth’s Fixlocal initiative at its inception phase, “When you’re starting something new and you’re with a group of people you respect who are accomplished in their fields, to get affirmation from them was an important part of the journey,” he said.
Through this network of ALI Fellows, Garth was able to make connections with possible funders and supporters, including global donor organisations.
“It will take a village to raise this,” Japhet says. “First, we need to give birth to it. This Venture Workshop goes a long way in making that a reality.” The Fixlocal platform is due to be launched in the first quarter of 2025.
If you are ALI Fellow and would like us to host an ALI Venture workshop on your project, please send an email to: sulugengeka@alisa.co.za
