DGMT Innovation Fellowship

01/09/2026

Change isn’t just about what you do. It’s about how you do it and who you become along the way.

For Andisiwe Hlungwane and her team at Teachers CAN, the DGMT Innovation Fellowship was embedded in their strategy. It shifted the very foundation of their work.

It wasn’t just about refining strategy,it was about reimagining collaboration, anchoring in purpose, and building with deeper intention.

Because when you change the how, you unlock a whole new way of viewing things.

Read more here: https://innovationfellowship.dgmt.co.za/from-individual-growth-to-collective-strategy-expanded-possibility-for-teachers-can/

25/08/2026

Cohort 9 Immersion 1 Learnings

How do NGOs in South Africa cultivate the kind of working conditions that enable the kind of creativity – the very particular kind of creativity – that is required for innovation?

The DGMT Innovation Fellowship’s understanding of this particular kind of creativity is that it is a practical tool for problem-solving. What we are concerned with in this Fellowship is the kind of problem solving that helps us rethink our society. That means rethinking the communities and institutions that must thrive in our society. This Fellowship is designed to be a rethinking space.

We like to speak about unlearning. We hope the organisational leaders and Fellows who participate in the Fellowship come to terms with what unlearning means as they embark on this learning journey. In part, it means rethinking, which begins with looking at how we think now and questioning this thinking, without necessarily replacing it with another way of thinking. This can make the Fellowship seem a bit unconventional and not like other learning programmes, which might teach a certain way of thinking.

Nonetheless, we take the conceptual grounding of the Fellowship very seriously. Previous organisational leaders have said this was a game changer for their Fellows. We offer.

concepts of innovation alongside ideas of radical social transformation. The kind of creativity underpinning innovation is invention, yet it is not supposed to end there, with a good idea for a new way of doing things. It is meant to result in a group or community of people adopting that new way of doing things as an ongoing and sustained practice going forward. This new way of doing things is designed to meet a need or solve a problem, and the group of people engaged in finding the new way of doing things should include the people most affected by the problem. To find the new way of doing things, they need to analyse the root causes of the problem, which we get from concepts of radical social transformation, since radical means “from the root”.

We introduce these concepts to a Cohort in ways that never let them settle, giving fast paced presentations that offer a small a taste of this and a hint of that, with no time to check they understood before moving on to another experience this time different, an experiential exercise, a practical tool, something more social like a guest speaker or a working supper, or an activity that uses arts and crafts or a competitive game of some kind. We encourage quiet reflection too, and observation and introspection using quiet time and a journal or a field notebook. We do all this to emphasise that what matters is your own thinking, your own creativity. You matter.

What kind of creativity is needed for invention? What kind of creativity is needed for transformation from an old to a new way of doing things?

In an immersion, you are in a group of strangers with one colleague at your side, someone from your own organisation that you may or may not know that well. Everyone is talking and sharing ideas and commenting on what’s going on, and you are learning from that and from them. You are never asked to articulate that; it is a feeling, and not just your feeling alone but the feeling when all of you are feeling together in one space. You are all different, and so are your organisations, but something about the work your organisation does matters to each one of you. It might matter to you all in different ways: your organisation has a purpose, and that purpose galvanises something in you, and you have a unique role to play in achieving that purpose. At the same time, you see that sense of purpose reflected in the room, and you recognise something that is shared.

As you share that knowledge, you start to catch a glimpse of something. You are tired, you have done enough peopling in one week to last you a decade, the concepts aren’t sticking and it’s all a bit bewildering. Then someone says something truly illuminating and that hits in a certain way and you can literally feel that new knowledge changing you and while you can’t say how or why, it is never going to leave you and because of it you are going to see things differently from now onwards. That means there is a chance that you are going to respond differently in a situation at some point and now you are becoming a thinker, a rethinker, a creative. An innovator.



This is fertile soil: these new concepts, plus a group of people, plus creativity lets something happen of its own accord, something transformative: not numbers and data but something intangible, immeasurable, yet to be realised. Something friendly, and sane and important. Solidarity, communion, a sense of wonder. The gratitude and appreciation of being taken seriously, and of being cared for, and at being interesting to other people, and for mattering, for being important, is food. Food for the inner being, for the spark in organisations and the attraction of the work of rethinking society.

To read more about the kind of creativity that is a practical tool for social problem solving and for rethinking society you might like to read Folios, Volume 6, Moleskine Foundation, The Law of Creativity: on decanonisation, alchemy and wisdom, Milan, Italy, May 2024.

20/08/2026

On 14 August, the Innovation Fellowship team came together for a debrief following
Immersion 1 with Cohort 9.

One of the key reflections that come up during Immersion 1 debriefs is the importance of recognising that we do not have to do the work alone. Our colleagues are also part of the innovation process, bringing their own experiences, perspectives and investment in the work we are trying to advance.

Creating a more collaborative environment can start with making more intentional space to connect with our colleagues, including moments of play and lightness. These moments help build relationships and create the conditions for more
meaningful collaboration, much like the playful spaces we create during the Fellowship.

To close our debrief, we joined in on the popular "Who's Most Likely To?" trend, with a work edition tailored to our team. It was a tun way to end the session, and share a few aughs beyond the formal work of the day.

13/08/2026

On 27 July, we welcomed Cohort 9 of the DGMT Innovation Fellowship to their first immersion, bringing together a new group of leaders working across early childhood development and youth development.

Immersion 1 creates space for Fellows to begin with themselves. Through reflection, conversation and exploration, Fellows are invited to examine their ways of being and consider how their assumptions, values and ways of seeing shape the work they do.

As part of this first immersion, we invited Smangaliso Mbili, Innovation Manager in DGMT’s All Young People on Pathways to Productivity, also known as the AYP portfolio, to speak with the cohort about some of the questions emerging from AYP’s work around young people and pathways to opportunity.

Smanga’s presentation, What does it take to make opportunity more reachable?, encouraged Fellows to think beyond programmes and consider the journeys people experience across different interventions and systems. As he highlighted, a programme can be delivered successfully, targets can be met, and participants can complete it. Yet, the young person’s pathway to a meaningful and sustainable opportunity can still fall apart.

The session invited Fellows to pay closer attention to the “handoffs” between different parts of a young person’s journey and to ask who holds responsibility when those connections fail. It also explored the importance of relationships, coordination, readiness, care and learning in making pathways work.

This conversation was particularly relevant for Cohort 9, whose organisations are working across ECD and youth development. It offered the cohort an opportunity to connect their own organisational experiences to broader questions about how systems work, where people get stuck, and what it takes to create more connected pathways for the people and communities they serve.

Smanga’s session also connected with the broader spirit of the Fellowship: staying curious, questioning our assumptions, and being willing to look beyond the boundaries of our own organisations.

As Cohort 9 moves into the next stage of their journey, we look forward to seeing what they sense, question, and discover together.

10/08/2026

In celebration of Women's Day, our Project Lead Skhumbuzo Moodaley- Mpisane wrote a heartfelt love letter to the women of the DGMT Innovation Fellowship. As we mark this important day once again, we thought it was only fitting to reshare his words.

We checked in with him, and everything he wrote still rings true today. If anything, the appreciation has only grown. This letter remains a reminder that meaningful leadership is built on trust, collaboration, care, and the extraordinary women who shape our work every day.

To the women of the Fellowship, and to all the women whose leadership transforms lives, communities, and futures, Happy Women's Day. We celebrate you today and every day.

When I was in High School, my best friend was popular, and I used to receive letters on his behalf. I would have the “pleasure” of reading and responding to these letters. Some of them I will express “my undying love,” and some I will express how “sorry I was that I had fallen for another” (by “I” in these letters, I mean my friend). The point of this history lesson is that I have some experience in writing love letters, and as we mark Women’s Day, I’ve been reflecting on the women who make the DGMT Innovation Fellowship not just possible, but meaningful.
I want to talk about three women I work with every day. Not in a “check the box” way, but in a way that reminds me, daily, that leadership is a shared experience, and that power grows when it is distributed.

Let me start with Charity Sebopela, our Project Manager. If this project had an engine, it would be her. Charity is the person I lean on when I need to think through decisions, revisit the roots of the project, and manage the sometimes-unpredictable logistics that come with running a national leadership programme. She brings deep historical knowledge of the Fellowship and sharp operational instinct. In many ways, she helps me navigate complexity with clarity, and she does it all with quiet strength. (See what I did there?? Complexity, Clarity, and I’m talking about Charity) (HaHaHa).
She’s the person behind the experience, not just what we facilitate, but how we make people feel. When we speak of curriculum, many of us think “content.” But Charity ensures that our partners, fellows, and team feel seen, supported, and heard. She is our kryptonite against chaos. (Also, she might’ve strongly “encouraged” me to write this, but I’d write it again and again.)

Then there’s Nandipha Yona, our Communications Intern and Facilitator. Nandipha is the most recent addition to the team, but it feels like she’s always been part of the story. She fit in like a glove. She’s our Master Communicator, the person who ensures that the essence and impact of the Fellowship reach the world in ways that are real, resonant, and relatable. Whether it’s the tone of our social media posts, the structure of a story, or her voice-over work (which, honestly, deserves an international award), Nandipha brings the programme to life.
She also facilitates during our immersions with a lightness that connects across age and experience. Her youthfulness isn’t just refreshing; it keeps us relevant. Through her, we speak a language that’s current and future leaders understand. Oh, did I mention that she dresses like she has a stylist? (or maybe she actually does).

And then there's Kathleen Dey, or Simply Kath. She’s our Learning Programme Facilitator, and I like to think of her as both the soul and the brains of our learning space. With years of experience as Director of R**e Crisis, her knowledge of the sector is unmatched. But what makes her presence so important is not just what she’s done; it’s how she shows up. Passionate, imaginative, and unflinching in her commitment to leadership development. She creates thought-provoking trainings that challenge people to grow, reflect, and lead with integrity.
Oh, by the way, Simply Kath is also the person who brings colour and curiosity to the team. She paints, she laughs deeply, and she always makes us think differently. I’m convinced she was the president of something in her previous life, if not several things (and has, what I consider, a strange love for stationery, and googly eyes).

Brace Yourselves, I’m About To Make This About Me, again: This team has taught me that love for this work can deepen when shared with the right people. That leadership isn’t static, but it’s something you grow into every day. I’ve learned that trust doesn’t come from titles, but it comes from showing up consistently, letting go of ego, and truly listening. I’ve learned that remote work works, especially when people are aligned and committed. Presence is about more than being in the same room. I’ve also learned that I’m not as funny as I thought (shocked face, I know). And that’s okay, because this team reminds me to laugh, to dream, and to lead better (and write such letters to get “my jokes” out there).
A note to self, as a leader: In allowing yourself to be led, at times, you won’t lose your power. You’ll discover new dimensions of it. It’s okay, necessary, even, to follow the brilliance, the fire, the care, and the vision that the women in your team bring to leadership. It doesn’t diminish you. It grows you.
Happy Women’s Day to these three phenomenal women, and to all the women whose leadership changes lives, organisations, and futures.

With Gratitude,
Skhumbuzo Moodaley - Mpisane
Project Lead, DGMT Innovation Fellowship

03/08/2026

After a successful Immersion and finally meeting with Cohort 9, the DGMT Innovation Fellowship team is taking a slow week to recharge.
We’re taking time to absorb all the learnings but also to rest and replenish our energies. Replies to the Fellowship and team's email addresses will be slow but open. Thank you for your patience.

30/07/2026

Welcome, Cohort 9, to Immersion 1!
It's time for our first immersion competition!

This week's challenge:

"What's the best question you've asked this week?"

Share your answer in the comments below. It could be a question that challenged your thinking, sparked a meaningful conversation, or shifted your perspective.

The Fellow who shares the most thought-provoking question will take home a prize!

We're looking forward to seeing reflections that emerged throughout the week.

28/07/2026

Building without owning: reflections on my leading the growth an alumni community which sustains itself

By Carla Watson, Chair, DGMT Innovation Fellowship Alumni Committee

When I stepped into the role of inaugural Chair of the DGMT Alumni Committee, I inherited an unusual ecosystem: a network of 160+ alumni and 40+ organisations, all connected by a shared belief that change in civil society is built through leadership and its people, not only through interventions.
But I also inherited a set of questions I've sat with carefully, largely landing on: how do you grow a community without smothering it?

I am a student of Stoicism, driven by values of wisdom, courage and justice often showing up through my expectations of excellence, creativity and compassion. My professional and academic background is in leadership, policy and power. I spent the better part of a decade building asset based communities, leveraging held skills, social capital and informal networks. So when I reflect on my role as chair of this alumni I am driven by the simple belief: when people have a sense of belonging (community) they deliver shared excellence (performance).

We are committed to unlocking the capital within our Fellows through Gatherings, publications and cross-sector collaboration knowledge sharing. We have several projects run under portfolios which are shaping the foundation of this necessary work.

Community, not programme

Community and belonging are not to be confused with the absence of performance measurement or metric-based performance in professional settings. In our case, the Alumni is not a programme nor a formal organisation. Instead the Alumni is a set of professional relationships adjacent to each’s core work and deeply values-aligned through the DG Murray Trust’s vision of building an inclusive and innovative society.

These professional relationships sit with some distance from one another - the adjacent threads, not a tightly bound rope, offer sustainable community-based self-management. Communities can at times only truly function when they have room to develop and sustain themselves. Our role at the Innovation Fellowship is not to run the alumni community but it is to build the enabling environment in which the community can run and organise itself.

This isn't a cost-cutting philosophy dressed up as strategy. It's an embodied belief that when people share values and a vision for the change they want to see (an alignment that already exists thanks to the rigorous selection processes) you don't need to manufacture connections. You need to resource it, protect it, and then step back.
That stepping back takes discipline. Through my Stoic practise, I recognise my leadership practice as a form of persistence paired with restraint. You create the conditions, the measurement and then you trust the people and system to meet the objectives. It’s the restraint required that drives the quality of the outcome. My approach has delivered a functioning, committed alumni team working remotely across the country who until recently had never met each other but each consistently delivered on objectives and deliverables - an outcome that’s at times difficult to achieve even with paid environments.

As the holder of this network, the DG Murray trust, under the leadership of Skhumbuzo Mpisane demonstrates what deliberate leadership and community building can deliver. This becomes evident in how impact is measured, how we convene people regionally, and how we're clear-eyed about what we expect from the time alumni give us. This isn't a community that demands constant participation. It needs to be self-driven - and it can be self-driven, if the strategy is sharp enough to read the room of its alumni and sectors, politically and situationally.

That's the leadership I'm bringing to this Chair. My own background - in strategy, fellowship-building, and appreciating the role of power between funders and beneficiaries. As a committee, we are not here to be prescriptive. We are here to hold the vision, keep the metrics achievement and honest, and trust professionals to invest a reasonable, sustainable amount of energy into something they believe in, alongside their full-time jobs and full lives.

Collective impact beyond one project

I believe DGMT has an extraordinary opportunity here - not just for the Innovation Fellowship, but across its broader portfolio. When we recognise and resource collective impact through creative coordination, rather than waiting for an organic community to emerge on its own, we multiply what's possible with clear metrics. That's why I'm actively backing initiatives like our alumni-led podcast and civil society network directory, and why our gatherings increasingly bring Innovation Fellowship, and other projects such as Youth Capital, and TeachersCAN alumni into the same room. The point isn't just connection for its own sake - it's demonstrating, boldly, what happens when like-minded changemakers are brought together in a way that's independent, interdependent, and mutually beneficial.

Choosing the chewable problem

Our sector doesn't lack urgency, instead and as I’ve been quoted before on: we're faced with a buffet of problems demanding attention. The real discernment is making a selection on the ones that are digestible and being courageous to choose a measurable, specific aspect of the problem. In our tenure, we have committed to two specific issues we want to prove are digestible and measurable: professional peer mentorship and demonstrating values-aligned leadership across the civil society sector.

This is the lesson I want to leave for whoever chairs this network after me. Community-building, while critically important, can quietly become a full-time job if you let it. Aim too high and you risk producing very little visible, observable change; aim too low and resources allocated bring little strategic shifts.
The wisdom is in identifying the right levers, and investing energy at a sustainable dosage - one that mirrors the very appetite and pace we expect from our alumni, whether that's replying to an email, or showing up to a fellow alum's hobby-turned passion exhibition simply because that's what this network means..
If there's one thing I'd want the next Chair - and every alumni member - to take from this, it's that a self-sustaining community of impact needs a different kind of leadership, one measured in what you resist doing as much as what you do. The Alumni Committee doesn't own this network. We hold it, briefly, in trust for the people who make it real every time they mentor a peer, share a resource, or show up for each other outside the boundaries of any formal ask.

That's the model I hope outlasts my tenure - not a bigger committee or a fuller calendar, but a community confident enough in its own values to keep organising itself to serve a more innovative and inclusive South Africa.

23/07/2026

My name is Mpho Sithole, Business Development Manager at Just Grace NPC, an organisation that has worked to empower the community of Langa since 2012 through skills development, psychosocial support, trauma-informed counselling, and after-school support, amongst other initiatives. I had been with the organisation for almost three years when I joined the Fellowship. Honestly, I didn't know much about it - I applied because my director asked a colleague and me to. That "out of duty" application changed me in ways I couldn't have imagined.

I remember walking into the first immersion with deadlines ringing in my mind, trying to recharge my social battery for a week that would be spent with strangers, and struggling to recall the innovation challenge we had put down at the application stage. The first immersion focused on us as individuals. For the first time, I observed myself and my thoughts almost from the outside - not with suspicion or problem solving, but with curiosity. I watched the thinker. So much of what I believed was challenged. I went home that Friday in what felt like an existential crisis, questioning everything I thought I knew. That was the start of my unlearning.

That unlearning mattered. It allowed me to enter the sensing, envisioning, and offering phases without fixed assumptions, learning at every step. My “fellow fellow” kept me grounded, challenged my thinking, and helped me see my blind spots. I was grateful not to walk the journey alone.

Before leaving the first immersion, we set aside two hours each week to meet and reflect on the process. We blocked the time in our calendars and protected it as far as possible. If we had no choice but to miss a meeting, we made up the time later that same week. Be very intentional with every aspect of the process – the work and the resting.

The process was not easy. Many times, I caught myself allowing assumptions to get in the way. If you can, train yourself to notice when assumption is leading you, and practise stepping back from that position. It is not always easy, but talking things through with my fellow fellow strengthened that muscle and helped me recognise when I was operating from assumption during the process.

There were many moments of discomfort. Sometimes all I could do was sit in them and keep going. I remember asking our learning group leader if it would get easier (his laughter told us that it wouldn’t be). My coach helped me talk through both the discomfort and the growth and brought real clarity to so many areas I was working through. The advice I would give: be honest with your coach, and with yourself, in those sessions. That is one of the best investments you’ll make in this process.
The real shift came when I stopped seeing the Fellowship process as coming up with a solution for one organisational challenge (ours) and started seeing it as a catalyst for sectoral ones. So many of the fellows in our cohort were facing similar problems, and I realised our solutions could serve the sector, not just our own organisations. Because of the learnings during the process and wanting to not only continue them but also share them with others, we (Just Grace) incorporated some of what we learned directly into how our team works - using the Six Thinking Hats to structure how we discuss decisions, building ontological check-ins into our meetings, and talking more deliberately about the organisation as a living system rather than a fixed set of processes operating outside of each other/in silos. Becoming a better leader for Just Grace means I can help develop other leaders in our organisation who will also be better leaders across the sector - generative leadership lives in how we practise leadership daily.

My cohort became a genuine support system. My advice to current Fellows: forge real friendships (or something that resembles that) with your group. They understand exactly what you're going through in a way few others can. Bounce ideas off each other, visit each other's organisations if possible, and stay close - those relationships carry the learning forward once faculty is no longer there to hold you in the process. And once faculty is gone and the process ends, they’ll help keep things together.

Investing fully in the Fellowship changes how you see yourself, your colleagues, your organisation, and the sector. I am not the same person I was when I started. I hope you won't be either. There's a whole sector waiting for the kind of leader this Fellowship can help you become.

21/07/2026

We love prototyping - and so does Amantle Kanyuchi. It is vital to developing sustainable and appropriate practises in the civil society sector. The process of iteration and prototyping has been important in Amantle’s career path - and it was illuminated during her time at the DGMT Innovation Fellowship. “Through the Innovation Fellowship, I came to appreciate prototyping: you have to start small, test it, see if it works … and iterate. That way, you find the right way.”
Now director at Affritude Communications and founder of She Empowers Afrika, Amantle still uses prototyping and iteration processes.

Read Amantle’s story here: https://buff.ly/Z6jknBS