Solomon Cedile

Solomon Cedile has created a nonformal education program for young people, leaders of community organizations, and ordinary citizens to help them take part in social development in South African townships.

Solomon’s “Community College” is an intensive one-month residency program that brings personnel from small community-based organizations together with participants from larger, national level citizen groups. As the groups study various aspects of public service, they also link with the kinds of partners they will need to carry out their work successfully. The College leads to more sustainable social change as well as new leadership in the townships. Solomon doesn’t rely on generating or spreading new strategies for community development, but instead acts as a facilitator to effectively connect existing knowledge with new users. Solomon developed his program especially for young people. Now he has taken this concept further, extending it to entire communities. He is working with residents one “block” at a time (a block has about 650 residents), using the same experiential learning model. Participants learn practical things, such as how to save money by building more efficient houses, as well as more conceptual skills, such as problem-solving and civic responsibility. Solomon aims for these residential blocks to help “tip” community behavior and development.

Eleven years into democracy, South Africa still faces many social challenges which threaten the consolidation of its young democracy. The four critical ones are poverty, unemployment, crime, Aids. While much has been done to redress the errors of the past, there is a need for sustainable plans to address these issues on the ground and at the macro level. Government has conceded that it cannot possibly deal and resolve all of these challenges alone, requiring the support and partnership of both the private sector and the citizen sector. The major gaps that remain in are where communities must take charge. While there is a proliferation of local organizations in many communities where the will and enthusiasm exits, many suffer lack of resources, capacity, knowledge, and skill to bring lasting change and improvement to their lives. Larger, established citizen organizations that try to collaborate with tiny CBOs often get frustrated at the lack of infrastructure—no landline telephone, no webpage, no email, and frequently absent “staff” who are really volunteers. Thus these small groups, with so much potential to bring positive change to their communities, seem doomed to a short lifespan, volunteer burnout, and scattered campaigns which earn them the reputation of being ineffective and inefficient.

The crux of Solomon’s “college” is a strategy that brings together large and small organizations. Focusing on social, economic, and environmental issues, the original month-long program is structured as residential learning experience. During the college month, each participating citizen organization hosts several days or a week of instruction, covering program expenses during that period. The sharing of costs makes the program accessible for all. For example, Biowatch might fund the housing, food, and venue costs for a three-day workshop on genetically-modified crops. Another citizen group could hold a practical workshop on composting. There are often immediate practical outcomes of the sessions, such as one session on sustainable house construction resulting in the construction of a wing to the Community College site that is in development. The programs are structured to allow for adequate time for learning and application of the program curriculum, as opposed to a shorter conference-style structure. By focusing the residential program on young leaders 18 to 25 years old, he optimizes their enthusiasm and their willingness to improve their communities by offering crucial background information and the know-how to launch their own ideas. As the program grew, Solomon developed the parallel Community College aimed at leaders of small organizations with the exact same structure and approach.To select which citizen groups will sponsor workshops during Community College, Solomon attends conferences himself and notices which national citizen-sector groups are most oriented toward grassroots development. He approaches them by offering an opportunity to have direct contact with their desired messengers and organizers and gain useful contacts “on the ground.” To find and select community participants, Solomon puts out announcements through his existing networks developed during his years with the African National Conference and other organizations. Local groups gain access to free training and expertise as well as experience speaking with and working with other professionals. Most important, they gain entry into extremely valuable networks. Both groups benefit from spending time in the townships, witnessing the truth of the hardships and demystifying the experience of township life. Both groups also emerge highly motivated and armed with concrete skills to apply.Community College takes applications and decides on attendees based not on formal education background but on project experience and networking potential. Geographic reach and representation is also important. Each year the geographic diversity of attendees increases and participants now come from across South Africa and outside the country.

In 2004 Solomon acquired land on which he is now building a center to house the college. He has also formally instituted the college as an organization and established a board which has 50 percent female representation and includes HIV-positive individuals. The Community College is hosted by Solomon's organization, the Community Networking Forum (CNF). Run on few resources, relying instead on in-kind donations and networks, CNF models the approach it helps to disseminate through Community College. To reach communities on a deeper and more direct level and to increase the impact of the month-long college, Solomon is extending the model to average citizens. He works with community members block by block, turning each neighborhood into its own Community College. These colleges combine “trade secrets” from the residential program with expertise endemic to the community. The block becomes a model for the rest of the township as they learn and apply skills in eco-friendly construction, energy efficient design, waste management, and other project ideas. Many lessons focus on how to “make something out of nothing.” Outcome activities included building a composting toilet, planting trees, and collecting oral histories of community elders. The Community College is also teaching communication strategies like how to write letters, make posters, and use graphics to get their messages out and mobilize support. Graduates of the original month-long program are now becoming advocates for the “block approach” in their own communities. For example, CBO leaders who completed the month residency program requested support to implement the model in Tanzania. Further spread of both programs has started to East Africa, Zambia, and nationally within South Africa. CNF has been asked to write a proposal to send a delegation of six people to Auroville International Township in India to share and network and learn from their experiences in sustainable development interventions.

Born in 1966, Solomon was one of eight children in a Xhosa-speaking family. In those years, any black person had to carry papers to travel even to the next village. When Solomon was nine years old, he saw a woman running away from the police, and he yelled encouraging words to her. The police picked him up instead and kept him for hours at a station many kilometers from home without letting him contact his family. They eventually released him, but he had to find his own way back without any money. Incidents like this one, which occurred throughout his life and the lives of those he loved, shaped Solomon's future in the struggle for justice.Solomon passed the standard nine years of high school and the rest of his education came from informal or community-based organizational training. He began his apprenticeship in community development at the age of 20, when he went to Tanzania to be trained by the African National Congress. Although he learned a great deal about organizing and mobilizing human resources, he became disillusioned with the training when he noticed the great discrepancy of power between older people and younger people in the ANC. He returned to South Africa determined to build a community which valued people of all ages.Back in his home township of Khayelitsha, Solomon joined a CBO where he met people who supported him in envisioning townships green with trees, as safe and flourishing communities. However, he was disappointed at the competition within that CBO and the entire sector. He thus decided to start his own organization that would "open source" with its strategies.In 1996, Solomon founded the Community Networking Forum. When he met with other leaders from other parts of the country, Solomon realized that he had valuable knowledge to share. He wanted to do so to while helping his peers gain more information they needed about local and global issues. A tireless networker, Solomon used the connections he had made through CNF to start up the Community College program.