Trust for Community Outreach and Education/TCOE

The establishment of Trust for Community Outreach and Education (TCOE) was influenced by the Ginsberg Education Foundation which was founded by the late Steve Biko who was a young activist in the late 1970s. The initial mandate of the organisation was to source funds in order to give bursaries to students who were marginalised and denied opportunities during the apartheid era. Through many difficult apartheid years, the organisation survived and continuously responded to the needs of the rural poor. Today, TCOE is a national organisation that operates mainly in the rural areas of South Africa. Its main focus in the past years has been to stimulate the building of local Organisations/ movements, and local leadership and assist these associations to access land with water, democratisation of governance, and food security (sovereignty) to improve livelihoods.

Some of the achievements of the organisation include but are not limited to:

* building of well-informed leaders who can lead local initiatives and campaigns;
* exponential growth and strengthened rural women’s voice through Rural Women Assembly;
* facilitation of the establishment of a number of popular rural organisations, farm worker unions and small scale farmers associations;
* creation of strategic partnerships and alliances with organisations working on land and agrarian reform issues;
* food sovereignty - developing alternatives for food production and livelihood;
* dissemination of useful information through popular community newsletters as
well as simplifying government policies in a way that ordinary women and men can engage with;
* conducting an extensive communication audit to understand the best way to communicate and distribute news to the communities;
* establishing electronic communication system that utilises the mobile phone
to communicate critical information such as the establishment of an SMS helpline for victims of GBV operational in the five provinces; * working with farmer workers in both the E.C. and the W.C.