Steve Biko Foundation

Programme Objectives
At the core of the Foundation's programs is an approach to development that focuses on fostering the intangible but essential community building blocks: history, identity and a cultural value system. The Social History Program is important not for history's sake but because it creates a powerful foundation for the development of leadership and is an agency for change at the level of the individual and the community.

Programme Activities
The Foundation has partnered with organizations like the Ginsberg Youth Council to train youths in the proper methods of capturing oral histories. At present the oral history research project produces a publication that documents its activities. There are future plans in place to extend this dissemination by spreading work into community radio programs, local newspapers and the Internet.
The Foundation is also in the process of developing a model for community organization and individuals that have an interest in documenting social histories. This model is intended to provide communities with the necessary skills and awareness of technologies to conduct in-depth interviews based on sound legal and ethical practices.

Programme Objectives
The Education Programme seeks to advance school reform through community participation. The programme strengthens school governance structures through capacity building and leadership training. It is targeted at school governing bodies, student representative councils as well as teachers and parents.

Programme Activities
• The Steve Biko Foundation works with a cluster of schools in the Buffalo City Municipal area conducting workshops on the role and functions of school governing structures. Through more effective governance and a sense of community ownership, schools such as Forbes Grant High School have been able to make a remarkable turnaround in their pass rate.

• The foundation is also active in organising schools debate at high school level. The debates are intented as platforms for promoting youth participation in local, provincial and national policy dialogues. Past debates include Racism and Xenophobia. The winning students attended and participated in Youth Conference of the World Conference on Racism. The foundations plans to grow the competition to include an essay competition.

Program Objectives
• To promote youth consciousness about HIV/AIDS with the aim of encouraging responsible sexual behaviour.
• To provide training in organisational development with the aim of building strong community health organisations.
• To assist position community health organisations for partnerships and linkages that will result in organised and fundable networks.

Program Activities
• The Community Health activities have focused on HIV/AIDS and the Blindness Prevention Community Outreach Programme.
• The HIV/AIDS Programme has seen the foundation facilitate linkages and training for various AIDS organisations in the Eastern Cape. The linkages also include the municipalities and local government and seek to address some the systemic challenges that prevent the flow of funding to community organisations. The programme is sponsored by the Ford Foundation.
• The Steve Biko Foundation also works closely with the Fred Hollows Foundation on promoting awareness in rural communities about eye-care, focusing primarily on cataract related blindness. Communities are also capacitated with knowledge of the public health referral system.

Programme Objectives
This program seeks to alleviate poverty by providing training in basic business management skills as well as business support services aimed at promoting entrepreneurial activities. The program targets both individuals as well as community business co-operatives.

Programme Activities
The Foundation has entered into partnerships with Investec Bank, the Buffalo City Municipality and the Eastern Cape Provincial Department of Social Development, which has resulted in the opening of an advisory centre called the Business Place – Eqonce. The Business Place enables young entrepreneurs to talk to professionals, business leaders and financiers. The aim is to enable business ideas to become a reality.

Programme Objectives
The foundation sponsors youth cultural festivals and seminars aimed at developing the capacity within the performing arts, writing and fine arts to use art as a developmental tool. The foundation is exploring ways of growing this programme through a network of fellows who will contribute through art training and publications.

Programme Activities
• Expressions of Identity - Youth Cultural Dialogues
• These dialogues bring together well known artists to converse around representations of black youth in the media. The youth are also challenged to provide, through their respective art forms, alternative self- perceptions of their own identities
• The dialogues also examine the role of art as a social practice and the means through which the community can express and assess itself. To this end the festivals provide the community of artists with an opportunity to conduct self analysis on issues pertinent to their development

Programme Objectives
• To promote the development of junior sports through school sports instructors.
• To promote the development of community sports by encouraging and building the organisational capacity of community sports councils.
• To provide training in sports administration to school, club and council representatives.

Programme Activities
• The foundation has partnered with the British Sports Council, Sports Coaches Outreach and Australia 2006 to collaborate on providing support for community sports initiatives in the Eastern Cape Province. The Steve Biko Foundation organised a Sports Indaba composed of various sporting organisations and codes to discuss the needs of the targeted communities.
• The Indaba led to a number of recommendation aimed at reviving community sports. These recommendations form the basis of the sports development programme. One of the main priorities is the need to address the lack of sports administration skills.
• The foundation has also been supportive of the Steve Biko Tournament organised for the past three years by the Ginsberg Youth Council. This soccer, netball, athletics, rugby, cricket and boxing tournament attract twenty four sports clubs from various councils.

The 6th Steve Biko Sports Tournament
The Steve Biko Foundation hosted the 6th Steve Biko Sports Tournament in King William’s Town from the 26 August 2006 to the 16th of September 2006.