U-turn is an innovative organisation that is changing how communities responds to homelessness. Our results are positive and long term. Here are 5 current projects that require funding for you or your business to consider:
- 100 Additional Life Change positions
- 10 Additional U-Turn locations across South Africa
- Biometric Readers
- City-wide NPO Database for Collaboration
- Mother City Homeless Campus
100 Additional Life Change Positions
The first of our business ambitions is to grow U-turn’s life change programme capacity from the current 32 positions (as at start of 2018) to 100 rehab positions as soon as possible. In order to add a space to our Life Change programme we have to create sustainable employment through U-turn’s Social enterprizes. We want to reach 100 rehab positions because that would mean that we empty an entire shelter each year. This will create real movement and hope in the homeless sector!
Expand the U-turn Service Centre in Claremont
The U-turn Service Centre in Claremont is used on a daily basis to connect with homeless people. Serving more than 80 individuals on an average day this is a very busy space but the fact is on very busy days we have to turn people away because we physically cannot fit them into the building!
What a shame that street people who wants to receive help can’t access it due to a lack of space!
The back of the building is derelict and we are currently applying to the City of Cape Town (our landlord) for permission to expand this building. We have drawn up plans on how we would like to develop this building.
If you own a building company or could donate funds to help us with the expansion of this building, we would be extremely grateful for any support you can offer.
Help us develop the back part of the U-turn service centre (pictured left) to allow us to serve more homeless people.
Expanding into northern suburbs in Cape Town and growing U-turn’s laundry capacity.
A kind landlord has heard about our plans to grow across the city (100 rehab positions) and has offered us long term use of a building in the Northern Suburbs of Cape Town. If we can secure the necessary support to develop the building we will open a service centre in the area and also relocate our retail operations (laundry, sorting, stock control etc.) to this new venue. Apart from funding, we need help from architects, town planners, construction companies and churches in the area to realize this exciting opportunity.
Expanding U-Turn services to new neighbourhoods in Cape Town.
In 2016, the Observatory Improvement District asked us to design a solution for homeless people in their area. We set to work and designed a solution that would have a capacity to engage 50 street people at a time. This solution included 1st phase work (ie a service centre) complete with support from the community, specialized Drug and Alcohol rehabilitation, as well as 2nd phase work ie work-based rehabilitation with Occupational Therapists. Our calculations showed that the total cost to operate this solution each year would be R2.1m. Between the City Improvement District and U-turn we could generate R700 000 for the project but we still needed an additional R1.4m per annum before we could undertake such a project. We would love to complete this project and show areas across cape town how we can create new capacity to help homeless people in the city.
10 Additional U-Turn locations across South Africa
We are currently working on plans to set up a social franchise so that other non-profits can operate the U-turn rehabilitation programme in their locations. A social franchise seeks to multiply impact, rather than profits as per normal commercial franchise models. We are currently codifying the U-turn operations and will invite interested non-profits to apply as soon as we are franchise ready. Qualifying NPOs will receive training, tools, and a lot of support to establish separate U-turn entities in their own location. If you would like to find out more about this, please get in contact.
Capturing Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)
The full U-turn model is being captured in an Operations Manual to support other organisations across South Africa to also take on the U-turn model. This manual will be accompanied by tools, teaching curricula and other training resources.
Strengthening U-turn systems for multi-site use
U-turn systems are being invested in both to make U-turn Cape Town more efficient but also so these systems can be rolled out across other non-profit organisations across South Africa. These include implementation of Sage Live, use of Einstein Analytics, and Google Suite.
Defining the onboarding process
The recruitment process for franchisees is currently being defined. When we are replication ready, which includes having seed funding in place – franchisees will be recruited and then supported through initial training and support in the setting up of the U-turn programme in their location
Biometric readers to enhance data capturing & client identification
We would like to enhance our record keeping system by adding biometric reader technology to it so that all staff and indeed any non-profit that use the system could identify clients using finger prints. The latter would reduce data capturing time, reduce duplicates in client data and also eliminate the possibility of fraudulent service deliver recording in the field.
If you have access to biometric reader technology or are able to fund us to develop the technology ourselves, we would be very keen to hear from you.
Citywide database to enable greater partnerships and collaboration between NGOs
We would like to see all street people charities working in the city to be able to share information with each other about who they are serving and in what way. This will enable charities to eliminate duplication of services amongst themselves and will also allow for effective referrals and case management. In order for this to happen we believe we need to create a city-wide database so that all services rendered in the sector can be visible to other authorised service providers. Various cities across the world have already built similar solutions and we would like to create that for Cape Town too.
In pursuit of this dream, U-turn created the DELSTAT M&E suite that sits on the Salesforce platform. This allows individual charities to capture client service delivery activities and also then shares a copy of this to a central database (called DELSTAT Central). The system as it stands already contains the major building blocks required for a citywide database. If we could bring this system to the other partners in Cape Town, we could significantly enhance service delivery to street people in the city! All this requires is funding so that 15 non-profits could adopt the system. To adopt the technology would cost approx. R80 000 –R120 000 per non-profit and this will also bring them the other benefits of a modern, state of the art CRM system, currently used by over 30 000 non-profits globally.
If you share the dream of better collaboration between non-profits and are able to provide funds so that other non-profits to adopt the technology, we would be very keen to hear from you.
A Mother City Campus for the homeless to start services for the missing 5000 street people
Cape Town currently has 7500 homeless individuals of which only 2500 are in shelters! It means 5000 people are sleeping rough each night! Faced with this HUGE backlog of infrastructure and subsequent service delivery, we dreaming of a day when we could create a campus for homeless people where up to 120 individuals can live, receive training and work at the same time. We have drawn up plans that show that we would need approx. 4000m2 and R12m per annum to operate it. The businesses we would run on the premises would assist to keep the costs down and in time, will eliminate the need for on-going funding altogether. Anyone who can assist us to make this plan become a reality (eg you have industrial space in Cape Town, or you have substantial funds to help us to acquire the infrastructure) should please be in contact.
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