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Khulisa Social Solutions

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Khulisa Social Solutions

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Restorative Justice, Community building, Youth Development, Global Mentorship and building a safer community for all.

Khulisa Social Solutions is a South African non-profit supporting long-term, community-led change by strengthening social cohesion and addressing complex social challenges nationwide. We believe in impacting lives through equipping and educating the people in a community.

20/10/2026

We keep investing. But are we changing lives?

South Africa is not short of committed organisations, development programmes or investment. Yet poverty, unemployment and social exclusion persist. Why?

Our work in Rustenburg offers some uncomfortable answers.

Since 2022, Khulisa Social Solutions has facilitated 362 Dialogue Circles, reaching more than 26,000 people. These are not simply community conversations. They are structured data-generation processes that help us uncover underlying causal factors, systemic blockages and existing community assets.

What are communities telling us? That training is often disconnected from employment, resources are fragmented, institutions work in silos and commitments are not always translated into measurable action.

We need to stop confusing activity with impact.

Through our Collaborative Implementation Model, supported by Insight Hub and Impact Outcomes, we are connecting community intelligence with stakeholders, investments and shared accountability to address the causes of persistent challenges rather than repeatedly treating their symptoms.

On 29 October, Khulisa and the University of the Free State will host MAP US IN – Safer Cities Through Community Data Intelligence, exploring how we can turn community evidence into coordinated action and measurable change.

The question is no longer simply how much we invest, but whether we are prepared to work differently.

Because ultimately, development should not be measured by how much we spend, but by how many lives we change.

https://khulisa.org.za/what-rustenburgs-communities-reveal-about-the-missing-links-between-investment-collaboration-and-measurable-impact-we-keep-investing-but-are-we-changing-lives/

19/10/2026

Dear Partner,

Cities cannot respond fully to what they cannot see.

Community members hold vital knowledge about the conditions affecting their safety, the resources already present and the gaps between services and lived reality. Yet much of this knowledge remains outside the systems used to understand cities and make decisions.

Join Khulisa Social Solutions and the University of the Free State for:

MAP US IN - Safer Cities Through Community Data Intelligence

Over the past 18 months, Khulisa has been using Dialogue Circles and AI-supported analysis to bring together the voices of more than 1,000 community members across all nine provinces and across a wide range of demographics. This work is revealing shared patterns, different lived realities, overlooked assets and persistent blockages that conventional data may not capture.

Drawing on this work, the webinar will explore:

- What more than 1,000 community voices reveal about safety, services and opportunity
- How lived experience and local assets can sit alongside formal data.
- How AI-supported analysis can help identify patterns across communities
- Why fragmented responses limit progress
- How research, practice and partnership can support coordinated action

Date: Thursday, 29 October 2026
Time: 15:00–16:30 SAST
Venue: Online
Attendance: Free

Please click the link below to register:
https://ufscm.devman.co.za/devman/register/57916/

We hope you can join the conversation.

Warm regards,

Lesley Ann van Selm | Founder and Managing Director
Khulisa Social Solutions
[email protected]
082 601 2299

13/10/2026

Strengthening Community Collaboration in Rustenburg

Thank you to Platinum Weekly for featuring Khulisa Social Solutions’ H.E.A.R.T. initiative in its 9 October 2026 edition.

The article highlights an important challenge: Rustenburg has committed organisations, valuable resources and strong community voices, but greater coordination is needed to translate these strengths into lasting impact.

Our focus is on connecting people, strengthening partnerships, reducing duplication and turning community insights into collective action.

One Community. One Heart. One Future.

02/10/2026

On World Heart Day, Khulisa Social Solutions hosted Heartbeat Rustenburg 2026, themed: One Community. One Heart. One Future.

The event opened with a special song, “One Heart, One Future,” performed by a Khulisa diversion graduate. The song captured the heart of the day: bringing community voices, partners, NGOs and local leaders together to restore trust, strengthen social cohesion and turn shared challenges into collective action.

Over the past four years, Khulisa and its partners have reached 26,466 people across Rustenburg’s mining communities, facilitated 362 Dialogue Circles, and enabled 1,560 people to participate in structured community conversations.

The evidence is clear: Rustenburg is not short of effort. Many organisations, departments, funders and community structures are already working hard. But too often, they are working without a shared picture of who is doing what, where, for whom, and towards which outcome.

That fragmentation is the real challenge.

Through Khulisa’s Collaborative Implementation Model, we are working to bring community voice, local assets, data, investment, NGOs, government, business and systemic blockages into one shared evidence base. The aim is to move from duplicated activity to coordinated action, and from counting outputs to measuring what actually changes in people’s lives.

The beat Rustenburg keeps missing is connection.

https://khulisa.org.za/khulisa-uses-world-heart-day-to-call-for-a-more-connected-rustenburg-development-system/

02/10/2026

𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗱𝗼𝗲𝘀 𝗹𝗮𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘀𝗼𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲 𝗮𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗿𝗲𝗾𝘂𝗶𝗿𝗲?

Khulisa Social Solutions’𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟱/𝟮𝟲 𝗔𝗻𝗻𝘂𝗮𝗹 𝗥𝗲𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝗻𝗼𝘄 𝗹𝗶𝘃𝗲 - bringing together the evidence, lessons and people behind a year of work across South Africa.

Inside the report:

🌈 𝟵𝟰,𝟮𝟭𝟳 𝗽𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗰𝗵𝗲𝗱 across seven provinces
🌈 233 staff working across communities and programmes
🌈 𝟭𝟴 𝗼𝗳𝗳𝗶𝗰𝗲𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘀𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗶𝗰𝗲 𝗽𝗼𝗶𝗻𝘁𝘀

🌈 Work spanning community safety, restorative justice, GBV and wellbeing, youth development, sustainable livelihoods and organisational strengthening

🌈 Evidence from Khulisa’s programmes showing why stronger connections between communities, organisations and institutions matter

🌈 A closer look at Khulisa’s evolving approach to community intelligence, collaboration and systems-level change

𝗔𝘀 𝗞𝗵𝘂𝗹𝗶𝘀𝗮 𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗮𝗰𝗵𝗲𝘀 𝟯𝟬 𝘆𝗲𝗮𝗿𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗹𝗼𝗻𝗴𝘀𝗶𝗱𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗺𝘂𝗻𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗲𝘀, the report asks a bigger question: how do we move beyond individual programmes and help the people, organisations and systems already in place work better together?

If you work in community development, social impact, funding, government, civil society or responsible business, we invite you to read it.

🌈 𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗳𝘂𝗹𝗹 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟱/𝟮𝟲 𝗔𝗻𝗻𝘂𝗮𝗹 𝗥𝗲𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁 𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲:

https://khulisa.org.za/reports/ -df_3282/1/

25/09/2026

On World Heart Day, community members and local innovators will meet in Rustenburg to explore solutions to local challenges and opportunities.

Khulisa has worked in Rustenburg for 26 years. At the HEARTBEAT event in Rustenburg on 29 September 2026, we’ll bring together what residents have shared through Dialogue Circles with local knowledge and ideas for action. AI-assisted analysis helps us identify patterns across people’s lived experiences, while our team checks the findings against their original accounts.

Through our Collaborative Implementation Model, partners can use this evidence to agree on practical steps. Our Impact Outcomes platform will help track commitments and whether the work is making a difference.

One Community. One Heart. One Future. ❤️

For the full press release, see the link below.
https://khulisa.org.za/world-heart-day-unites-rustenburg/

16/09/2026

Children are telling us what is happening. Are we listening?

Through Khulisa’s Dialogue Circles, girls and boys are speaking openly about bullying, peer pressure, social media, body shaming, masculinity, fear of exclusion and the powerful need to belong.

In previous Khulisa research, 72% of 647 children aged 9–17 said they had witnessed crime in their communities. But statistics alone do not tell us what it feels like to grow up in these environments.

Children often know the right choice. The real issue is whether their environment makes it possible to make that choice.

Their voices help us identify the systemic blockages — in families, schools, peer groups, communities and support systems — that can prevent children from acting on what they know is right.

We need to listen earlier — and act earlier.

Read the full Dialogue Circle Report: https://khulisa.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/GROOM_A_CHILD_COMBINED_DIALOGUE_CIRCLE_REPORT.docx

https://khulisa.org.za/children-are-telling-us-what-is-happening-are-we-listening/

15/09/2026

Building a sustainable community NGO takes time.

One year can establish governance, financial systems, compliance, monitoring and stronger leadership. But it rarely creates an organisation that can operate independently. True capacitation requires continuity, mentoring and trust over several years.

The greatest risk is stop-start funding. A three- or four-month gap can mean trained staff leave, systems deteriorate, boards lose momentum and community trust weakens. When funding resumes, valuable time and money go to rebuilding what was already achieved.

After three years of sustained support, the picture can be very different: NGOs can better attract funding, employ local people, manage grants, measure impact, and become permanent community assets.

We need to stop treating NGO capacitation as a series of workshops and start seeing it as an investment in community infrastructure.

Case study - Building sustainable community NGOs through long-term capacitation 14 Sept 2026.docx

11/09/2026

South Africa does not have a shortage of community projects. It has a shortage of investment-ready community organisations.

That distinction matters.

In Noupoort, Khulisa Social Solutions is working with 12 community organisations through the EDF Enterprise and Strengthening Programme. Our assessment identified 12 recurring systemic barriers, including weak governance and compliance, poor financial systems, limited monitoring and evaluation, grant dependency, weak market access, unemployment and fragmented relationships between community organisations, business and government.

Nine of the 12 organisations have already identified potential enterprise opportunities, ranging from poultry farming and agriculture to catering, digital services, branded products and youth-led property maintenance.

But an idea is not yet an enterprise, and funding is not the same as development.

That is why, in our model, capital only enters at stage six of a nine-stage process, after baseline assessment, systemic blockage analysis, capacity building, funding readiness and enterprise feasibility.

Some of these organisations are already reaching 150 to 200 people every month, while one reports reaching approximately 1,000 beneficiaries over the past year. The commitment and community reach are already there. The task now is to build the institutional strength, evidence, markets and partnerships that can turn that reach into sustainable impact.

We need to stop measuring community development by how much money is spent. The better measure is whether organisations become stronger and more accountable, whether enterprises secure real customers, whether beneficiaries move into skills, work and income, whether capital is invested in opportunities that can actually survive, and whether government, business and communities begin to align around what has been proven.

For Khulisa, the principle is simple: capital follows readiness. Readiness follows strengthening. Partnership follows proof.

That is how we begin moving from grant dependency to genuine local economic resilience.

https://khulisa.org.za/khulisa-and-edf-advance-evidence-led-model-for-community-enterprise-development-in-noupoort/

03/09/2026

We’re proud to announce that our Director, Lesley Ann van Selm, is a CEO / Executive Leader finalist in the Conscious Companies Awards 2026! 👏

Her commitment to listening, leading with empathy and working alongside people reflects what we stand for at Khulisa.

Please join us in congratulating Lesley Ann as we look forward to the awards on 17 September 2026. 💛

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105 Oxford Road, Saxonwold
Johannesburg
2196

Opening Hours

Monday	08:00 - 16:30
Tuesday	08:00 - 16:30
Wednesday	08:00 - 16:30
Thursday	08:00 - 16:30
Friday	08:00 - 16:30

Website

http://www.khulisa.org.za/

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