The HOPE Empowerment Scheme 4.1 Introduction
4.6 Problems
respondents argued that it would serve as enough motivation for them to work hard as they had to pay back the loans (Interviews 7 and 8). Lack ofequipment and finance was also a major factor hampering the activities of the training centre at Lamontville.
The centre required more sewing machines and materials to continue its training activities, at least at the current capacity of fifteen trainees at asitting.
The empowerment scheme so far is constrained financially to render such support.
Pastor Dube explained that the scheme would love to render such support if the resources were available. Currently, the only support that it had offered to its beneficiaries is networking opportunities. One way of providing such networking opportunities was through a business fellowship. The business fellowship which met twice a month under the auspices of the church provided a forum where people interact with one another and exchange ideas on how to groom their businesses.
Although the Foundation received some funding from church members and from Spoornet, the Municipality and the Department of Roads, Social Security (Interview 1, 8/9/2004), it was not clear how much was received from the above mentioned institutions. Moreover, from personal observation, it did appear that the scheme did not occupy a priority place in terms of fund allocation as compared to the HOPE Clinic. For example, during this study, the researcher never observed the clinic lack any material it needed. There was never a time patients were turned back because there were no materials such as syringes, needles and reagents for Voluntary Counselling and Testing (VCT) for HIV/AIDS. This is understandable though, given the consequences of the pandemic.
Another problem was the absence of a business orientation in the running of the scheme. The coordinator of the scheme agreed that the scheme had not been run with profit making as a motive. For example, given that workers were provided for companies without charging fees meant that the scheme would have lost substantial income. Again, there were products which the training centre could sell to make money, but it lacked the finances for mass production. Perhaps, as Pastor Dube has noted, the image of the church as a spiritually rather than economically oriented institution had played a role in this regard (Interview 1, 8/9/2004).
Another factor that was hampering the actualisation of the goals of the scheme was the lack of separate facilities for the administration of the scheme. The co-ordinator of the scheme was also the secretary of the church. The combination of the two jobs did not enable her to attend to the equally important job of managing the scheme. In contrast, the HOPE Clinic had separate offices and staff committed to the work of the clinic alone. This was not so in the case of the Empowerment Scheme. Even the training centre at Lamontville was situated in the church building. This implied that the training and other activities of the centre would be secondary to church activities. If the church had any activity during the day, then the training activity would have to be suspended until the end of the church programme. Also, the few equipment and materials of the training centre could be damaged during church services. There were no storage facilities in the church hall where these equipment and materials can be kept safe.
Another aspect of the scheme that has not been well developedwas that of monitoring and evaluation of the success or otherwise of the beneficiaries. There was no mechanism yet put in place to monitor or evaluate the progress of the beneficiaries after they had gone through the empowerment process. Pastor Dube claimed that it was difficult to monitor the beneficiaries because
when people have finished their training, you lose them out in the field ... then their lives become too busy, they become autonomous and independent ...
but obviously we do have a relationship with those people because most of them become part of the church ... what is good is that most of the people when they fail they come back again. Inthat way ...
we are able to keep track of those people (Interview 1,8/9/2004).
The coordinator of the Empowerment Scheme stated that the focus had been on training them and sending them out. The only way of monitoring them was through a weekly meeting of business people and a monthly business breakfast meeting. They are encouraged to be part of these meetings and to tell their success stories. In other words, if a beneficiary for any reason, could not be part of thesemeetings, he/she was lost without trace. However, the manager of Lamontville Training Centre had a different idea about how to monitor their progress which would involve the formation
of a co-operative society to which the beneficiaries will be free to belong. By so doing, they would be able to provide for one another the necessary support for their businesses to thrive (Interview 3, 18/1012004).
Synergy with other organisations, especially Christian faith basedinstitutions, was not adequately exploited. There were other Christian organisations in the field of development with which the Scheme could exchange ideas. For example, Diakonia was a development organisation that was formed by a coalition of several churches in Durban. There does not seem to be any collaboration between the scheme and Diakonia, or other Christian organisations providing similar services. This lack of collaboration can deny the scheme the opportunity to utilize facilities and expertise that may be available in other Christian organizations.