Dana and Alforde at the BLA Summit

COVID-19 is Calling for Holistic Social Impactand Utando is Heeding That Call!

In the development and social impact space, COVID-19 is definitely changing the way we do things, the things we are doing and as in the case of Utando Social Impact, reinforcing why we do the things that we do. Utando Social Impact is a social innovation agency focusing on the power of connectivity of multiple stakeholders for sustainable social change. Utando (Swahili for cobweb) represents the platform’s compelling case for connecting actors on the social impact value chain for conceptualisation, implementation and analysis of social interventions. Through ongoing entrepreneur mentorship, they support the initiation and growth of social innovation and social entrepreneurs.

Dana and Alforde of Utando chatted to DevDispatch from their base in South Africa on the effect of the pandemic on their work. They share with us that while in some respect, the onset of the pandemic has been a disruption, it has also shed some light on the urgency and the value of their mission to build connectivity within the social impact space. The issue of weak situational analysis and fragmentation between social change actors continue to be reflected even as organisations try to address the impact of COVID-19 on vulnerable communities.

“With COVID-19, we had this situation in South Africa where, many grassroot or community organisations decided to do food parcels. This was based on the assumption that the lockdowns and restrictions of movement meant that everybody household wanted and needed food parcels. While this may be true, it may have created a situation where households had multiple food parcels from different organisations, but no access to medication or data to for the kids to keep up with schoolwork.”

The challenge of coordinating responses and fragmentation of interventions is a longstanding issue in how social change projects and programs are conceptualised, implemented and evaluated. This is also commonly attributed to the lack of holistic solutions and difficulty in measuring social impact. By bringing NGOs, corporates, individuals, private equity and venture capital firms, not-for-profits and governments to connect and explore opportunities to make exponential impact in vulnerable communities, Utando is responding to a request that social actors have been making for a long time in which they have been calling for more collaborative partnerships as well as more wholesome interventions in their support to vulnerable communities.

“For example, a community in poverty is likely to be facing issues of access to nutritional food, education, housing, healthcare as well as high mortality rate and possibly high crime rate. Our theory of change looks at what is the situation now and what do we want to change about these communities? An intervention that provides access to education by building a free community school tackles the issue of access to education is good, but can it be improved by brining other players to the table? We {Utando} focuses on bringing together different players that have different interests in changing different things in this community. So we are talking about players that maybe have an interest in education, but at the same time you can’t send the kids to learn on an empty stomach so you need a player with an interest in food security to come on-board. At the end, you need to build an ecosystem around each vulnerable community to holistically and sustainable tackle their socioeconomic problems.”

Before the pandemic hit South Africa, Utando had planned to engage with stakeholders all over the world and continue to raise awareness on the transformative capacity of collaborative social innovation and social impact analysis and build a platform where social actors can collaborate. Their soon to be launched electronic system for social impact will allow social actors to forecast, collaborate, plan, implement and measure their impact not only in financial terms but also qualitatively and quantitively.

“We need a platform that people can collaborate on, and say here is what’s happening in this part of the world in this area and here is how you can collaborate with like-minded people that have an interest in this space and here is how we can help you, be it at an organizational level or inter-organizational level , here’s how we can help you implement some of the programs you want to implement. Here’s how we can help you deploy resources in an efficient way.”

 

The onset of the pandemic and the ensuing lockdowns and restrictions on movement has not only reinforced Utando’s mission but has allowed it to approach its delivery differently. Utando has taken advantage of the slowdown to focus on developing its impact analysis and measurement software, working with its developers remotely. Its engagement with stakeholders has been different especially with private sector stakeholders given that a majority of them have gone into survival mode and are reprioritizing. This is therefore affecting the nature of conversations around private sector contribution to social impact.

Utando is however taking advantage of these changes and new dynamics to understand and learn from social entrepreneurs on how they are adapting to crisis and some of their success factors.

“The challenges they (social entrepreneurs) face, really aren’t that different from pre-COVID19, maybe just exacerbated a bit. Resourcing is the challenge we hear about a lot but what has been really interesting is the importance of community relationships to a quick response to COVID19.  So, with the pandemic and people jumping to action, some of them have not hit the target because of the fact that they didn’t know the community well enough. So, the ones that had those existing relationships were the most successful and one of the things that we encourage when we talk to people  is that starting a new initiative is excellent and admirable but is there something that is already existing that you can contribute to and strengthen and amplify the impact?”

Other success factors for delivering during a pandemic has been visibility. This not necessarily through heavy digital marketing but simple steps like a Facebook page and a WhatsApp business account. Organisations and social enterprises have been able to tap into their existing contacts and database to meet the needs of those who have needed it during this pandemic. 

Communication through WhatsApp has actually become the most common anchors to success during this pandemic. Another success factor has been adaptive leadership that allows an enterprise to absorb the shock of the pandemic and evolve quickly to seeing the opportunity looking for new ways reach clients and new revenue streams. There are also other social enterprises that have developed out of the pandemic.

COVID-19 has brought to the foreground entrenched inequalities despite billions of dollars spent on sub-Saharan Africa. Utando insists that collaboration is absolutely important especially as Africa continues to diagnose its problem and find local sustainable solutions. Pre-determined solutions are not going to work anymore, and we absolutely agree!
You can follow the work of Utando Social Impact at www.utandoimpact.com