Impumelelo, a reason to believe

The Impumelelo Innovations Award Trust was created to reward innovation in government and public-private partnerships that reduce poverty and address key developmental issues in South Africa. Built on a model developed by the Ford Foundation in partnership with the John F Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, Impumelelo set out to:

• Identify and highlight innovative and effective examples of service delivery in South Africa's public sector
• Reward projects that successfully focus on the reduction of poverty and the improvement of the quality of life of the poor
• Spread the word about projects which improve the delivery of services in South Africa
• Present these successful projects as models of best practice to other service providers
• Assist in the adaption and implementation of award winning projects on a wider scale.

After seven years we now have a weblog! The public sector and anyone interested in development and service delivery in South Africa can now come and learn more about Impumelelo, its objectives, programmes and day to day events.

We strongly believe that practical and implementable solutions exist to address poverty in South Africa. Moreover, based on more than 1300 submissions, Impumelelo in its seven years of operation has built up an unprecedented database of projects accross a range of sectors including agriculture, community development, criminal justice, education, infrastructure development, HIV/AIDS, water delivery and the like.

Since 2004, Impumelelo has embarked on a series of case studies focussing on HIV/AIDS, Housing, Public Works, Sanitation & Waste Management, the Environment and Criminal Justice, using the award winning projects to demonstrate good or best practice and lessons learned from the public sector. In addition, "impumelelo" our annual magazine features the award winners in a high quality publication which is distributed to all levels of government in South Africa.