DGMT
No data or support: the reality of learning through lockdown in South Africa’s post-school institutions
While the impact of COVID-19 on school-going learners has featured prominently in national discourse, many students in post-school education and training institutions feel like they’ve been left to fend for themselves. “I haven’t received a computer or data. I live in an area with poor network coverage, and [to get network coverage] I have to […]
Posted on 11 Sep 2020
Hands-on Learning Issue 17
Through our Hands-on Learning publication, we hope to play a helpful role in synthesising information from innovators and implementers in civil society, supporting them to share what they have learned so that others are able to draw from and build on their experiences. As part of this learning exercise, DGMT CEO, Dr David Harrison penned […]
Posted on 18 Aug 2020
Learning Brief: Leadership transitions
Leadership transitions are a particularly risky time for nonprofit organisations (NPOs). Transitions can be intimidating, but they also provide the opportunity for renewal and growth when key management and leadership strategies are employed. While leadership transitions are inevitable, the anticipation thereof is frequently neglected, leaving NPOs vulnerable to crisis and possible demise when the time […]
Posted on 18 Aug 2020
Learning Brief: Alcohol Harms Reduction – Community-level interventions
The COVID-19 lockdown with its repeated alcohol sales bans, has made it painfully clear that South Africans have a complex relationship with alcohol. While many South Africans do not drink at all, alcohol continues to permeate and threaten our families and communities. This is because those who do drink tend to do so often and […]
Posted on 18 Aug 2020
A (Women’s) Day of Reflection
Could you tell? Our media, usually flooded with Women’s Month sales, and calls to wear our doeks, or for men to wear heels, was notably more subdued. As South Africans, we have always been ambivalent about how we mark historically important days. Many of these days are in memory of some of the darkest parts […]
Posted on 13 Aug 2020
Learning quickly from Covid-19
It was a bit like waiting for a hurricane, except that we knew that it would definitely make landfall. So we battened down the hatches and waited in the eerie calm until the Covid-19 storm hit. As a South African foundation, the DG Murray Trust (DGMT) quickly pivoted its work to key areas which we […]
Posted on 7 Aug 2020
Media Statement: Court application to compel MTN to zero-rate approved PBO websites
The DG Murray Trust has launched a court application to compel mobile network operator MTN to zero-rate the local educational websites of public benefit organisations that have been officially approved, but not actioned. This application follows three months of engagement with the three largest network operators (Vodacom, MTN and Telkom Mobile) urging them to zero-rate […]
Posted on 20 Jul 2020
Thinking innovatively around addressing a looming malnutrition crisis in South Africa
In the past week, South Africa has seen exponential growth in the number of COVID-19 cases across the country. Whether this indicates that we are reaching “the peak” remains to be seen but what is clear is that things are going to get a lot worse before they get better. What is also clear is […]
Posted on 17 Jul 2020
Urgent measures to curb alcohol-related gender-based violence
The Covid-19 epidemic has highlighted the value of each human life, and the message from our leaders is that lives must be saved through urgent and radical action. For that reason, they took unprecedented steps – commensurate with the threat to human life but hugely damaging to the economy – to reduce the spread of […]
Posted on 30 Jun 2020
COVID-19 must be used to disrupt long-term mortality trends – and radically improve our education system
The clinically cold term ‘excess deaths’ has worked its way into the global lexicon. It means the number of deaths that occur in excess to that which would typically be expected in any given time period. If the death rate for whites is an acceptable norm for South Africa, then there are roughly 200,000 excess […]
Posted on 11 Jun 2020
