THE KOLISI FOUNDATION

The night before the 2019 Rugby World Cup final in Yokohama, Siya and his wife Rachel sat in the lobby of the Springboks’ hotel and conceptualised the Kolisi Foundation. With a vision to change narratives of inequality in South Africa, they settled on three strategic focus areas – food security, genderbased violence, and education and sport development.

The Foundation was officially launched on 4 April 2020, during South Africa’s first Covid-19 lockdown, with the slogan “Remember the one, one by one”.

“Just focus on the one heart, the one person, and the one life that you are changing,” Rachel explains. “By remembering the one, one by one, we will impact the nation.”

The Foundation has achieved a lot over the past three years. Its Siyaphakama Zwide education and sports development project – named a er Siya and his mother Phakama (‘siyaphakama’ means ‘we are rising’ in isiXhosa) – seeks to address challenges facing township youth by creating a tailor-made programme to address physical education, nutrition, academic education, life skills and youth employment.

The Foundation’s Mandela Day campaign has raised more than R219 000 for Lungisa Haai, also known as ‘Mama Lungi’, who runs five community kitchens in Gugulethu, Summer Greens, Khayelitsha, Dunoon and Joe Slovo. Her kitchens now feed more than 1 000 children and elderly people every day.

The Foundation teamed up with the Saartjie Baartman Centre for Women and Children to tackle gender-based violence. Together, they created a facility that provides a supportive and healing space for mothers and children, who can spend quality time together, while benefiting from counselling, therapy reflection, reading and journaling. The space was named a er a gender-based violence survivor, Nikita Lewis.

There’s also the Kolisi Connect initiative, which brings different organisations together once a month to connect, share and engage with each other.

– For more information, visit https:// kolisifoundation.org