In 2009, applying the lessons learned from its earlier multi-year ECD investments in South Africa and from consulting with numerous thought leaders in the sector, ELMA determined that it was time to expand its focus beyond only direct ECD service delivery. While the ECD NGO sector was providing high quality programming, it had become clear that there were many systemic barriers to scaling those services, to reach the poorest and most excluded children. Universal access to ECD services would require a new set of skills, abilities, and ways of thinking to be drawn into the sector.
ELMA recognized that supporting and enabling systems change, particularly in such a complex and multi-sectored area like ECD, required a different approach to funding. It required a long-term, flexible approach that included consistent and engaged partnerships enabling teams with the right set of skills to be recruited, to be responsive to the political context, to be opportunistic, to create space for learning, and to be long-term, outcome driven. As funder, it would require us to stay the course through complexity and change and to form strong working relationships with our partners. It required establishing Ilifa Labantwana.
This was a shared vision of ELMA and the DG Murray Trust. Other collaborative funders joined along the way; first UBS Optimus Foundation, then First Rand Foundation and now Co-Impact. Each of these funders brought unique and complimentary skills, energy, and a level of engagement with the ECD sector that contributed to an effective collaboration.
This case study has reaffirmed that supporting the establishment of Ilifa has been the right decision. The Ilifa System Change Toolkit unearthed and brilliantly articulated in the case study resonates strongly with what ELMA had hoped its partnership approach to Ilifa would enable. We consider it a privilege to have walked this learning journey with Ilifa and its core funders. We have stayed the journey over the long-term as we believe in the capabilities of Ilifa’s leadership, from its Executive Director to its engaged board of directors. They have shown the patience to grow a deep understanding of the ECD system, to collaborate widely and effectively, and the ability to effectively embrace emergence and respond quickly to challenges and opportunities.
As a funder in the broader South African ECD sector, ELMA believes that Ilifa plays a unique role in the ECD ecosystem, as affirmed by the case study. The case study articulates Ilifa’s role in generating, mobilizing, and engaging ECD evidence, and its ability to effectively engage and collaborate with the state at all levels. It demonstrates how Ilifa has remained responsive and nimble to both the changing political context and new and key opportunities while not requiring attribution for its work but rather ensuring it is playing the best role it can play in the system. We believe it has been able to hold this unique position in no small part due to the diverse and strong sets of skills, relationships, and resources it has been able to draw into the ECD sector.
We are happy to see that ELMA’s long-term partnership with Ilifa and its core funders has created space for Ilifa to refine and develop its practice such that its work can contribute towards growing Global South systems thinking as well as towards efforts to build and shift the ECD ecosystems in other countries and contexts.