The Learning Lunch podcast explores ideas, approaches and social innovations – creating opportunity for non-profit organisations’ teams to discover what others are learning and space to reflect on what these insights might mean for their own strategy and programme implementation.
South Africa has a constitutional responsibility to uphold children’s rights. The government does this in different ways, by setting laws, delivering public services, allocating funding from the national budget and by taking decisions that affect children’s lives. What’s been missing for a long time is a shared vision for all children and teenagers which effectively places their interests at the centre of government decision-making.
This is where the National Strategy to Accelerate Action for Children (NSAAC) comes in — a high-level, shared vision aimed at improving the wellbeing and life outcomes of all children and teenagers in South Africa, particularly in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdowns that disrupted public services and people’s livelihoods.
This new strategy can only succeed if everyone gets behind it, including civil society organisations, many of whom are already delivering services in areas where government capacity is poor or limited, reaching people in their homes and remote communities.
In this podcast, we explore the type of strategic thinking needed to galvanise different sectors of society behind a common vision, with Noxolo Gqada, Strategy Lead for the Hold My Hand Accelerator, a project that supports the vision and priorities of the NSAAC. She talks about how the Accelerator is thinking about fast-tracking change for children.
Noxolo Gqada is a medical doctor (MBChB) with an MBA from the UCT Graduate School of Business and an executive elective in Behavioural Science from the Yale School of Management. Her career spans clinical practice, co-founding a healthtech start-up, consulting, and currently leading strategy at DGMT. In her current role, Noxolo heads the strategy for the National Accelerator for Children and Teens — a nationwide initiative supported by the Presidency to improve outcomes for young people. This work brings together civil society, the private sector, and government in a shared effort to create systems-level change. She is passionate about applying systems thinking and behavioural insights to develop innovative, sustainable solutions in healthcare and social development.
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