By Yuniya Khan | Project Director
On behalf of all of The Emerge Project, THANK YOU for your continued support!
Our goal as The Emerge Project (TEP) is to identify black South African leaders who are working to make a difference in their community, and share their story through video and social media networks. During the last quarter of 2018 we had the privilege of working with Semadi Ngwenya, director and spokesperson for The Hub Presents Alex, which is a tourism and community development hub in the township of Alexandra in Johannesburg.
To provide some context: townships were set up during apartheid rule in South Africa, with the intent of separating the races and keeping them apart as much as possible. Townships, or “locations” as they’re sometimes called in South African vernacular, were built generally miles outside of main cities, and became the home of South Africa’s black and colored citizens. This is still the case today. Alexandra Township was one of the first created, and thus is one of the oldest and largest in the country. Like many townships, it is perceived as a dangerous place to be, full of poverty, crime, and grime. These perceptions are often sharpened by the fact that Alexandra is located literally across the main highway from Sandton, referred to as the richest square mile in the entire continent.
TEP featured Semadi Ngwenya to show the side of Alexandra that many do not (or choose not) to see. The Hub Presents is a venue for meetings, community gatherings, and social events. It is also Alexandra’s tourism hub, providing a variety of themed tours throughout the township. And it is a community development organization, spearheading or supporting various initiatives addressing the community’s challenges. Semadi and a growing team of Alexandra residents committed themselves to doing everything in their power to bring opportunity to Alexandra, and to build on the many community-based assets that exist there.
We created a video about Semadi and the work he and The Hub are doing in Alexandra. We also posted and boosted this video on Facebook in October 2018, in addition to posting on other social media sites. To date, this video is our most watched video, according to Facebook analytics, with about 4,000 views over a period of one month. Anecdotally, The Hub has received about half a dozen new tourism clients as a result. In March we will conduct a more thorough evaluation of the impact of this video on the organization and the community.
In addition to creating this video, we also worked on an evaluation of the other leaders TEP has featured. To date we have created eight videos featuring eight inspiring leaders, including Semadi. We created a short anonymous survey, and are in the process of conducting in-person interviews with each of our featured leaders, in order to capture the real impact these videos have generated. We will also use this information to identify areas we need to improve or rethink.
We will be tabulating the results of this evaluation exercise in the coming months. In the meantime, we have two additional videos, featuring two more black leaders, that are currently in production. These will be completed and posted by the end of May 2019.
THANK YOU for your support, for standing behind these black leaders who are giving so much of their time and resources to creating change and building a new future.
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