Introduction

“This report on the Grants Awareness Campaign has been put together by Soul City Institute for Health and Development Communication (Soul City: IHDC) and the Alliance for Children’s Entitlement to Social Security (ACESS).

The report serves to:

• give readers information about the Grants Awareness Campaign – what it was and what it set out to achieve
• share the lessons learnt during the campaign.

The information in this report is taken from a project report written for ACESS and Soul City: IHDC as well from a report on a major, independent evaluation of the Grants Awareness Campaign that was carried out in 2004 by a company called Insideout Research. The Insideout evaluation involved both qualitative research (asking people how they felt about the campaign) and quantitative research (getting the facts, figures and numbers for example, how many people were helped).

Interviews were conducted with government officials, ACESS and Soul City: IHDC leadership, ACESS members and other key role players across South Africa. This research was combined with an analysis of uptake rates of the Child Support Grant, ID and birth certificates.

This report brings all of this material together into one easy-to-read document. Our aim is to assist those who wish to plan and run campaigns such as ours to understand what we did and how we went about doing it. We also wanted to ensure that the key lessons learnt during the Grants Awareness Campaign are shared with the right people. With a better understanding of what worked and what did not work during the campaign, we can all continue to fight child poverty in South Africa with ever more success.”