Episode #58: Show Summary
With exceptional kindness and clarity, Mada Siebert and Linet Dube from African Solutions to African Problems (ASAP) join Jef Szi to tell the ASAP story and its approach to supporting the rural communities in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. The eleven Xhosa and Sotho villages in the Matatiele region they work with are deeply challenged by cycles of poverty and trauma. These village are underserved, last-mile communities that have been profoundly impacted by the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
We come to understand how ASAP’s asset-based model of community support, which listens to the needs and waters the emergent responses within the villages, is foundational to everything ASAP does. We learn how ASAP partners with the gogos (grandmothers), tribal chiefs, the Imbizo social structure, and other proactive members to build up these forgotten communities. Mada and Linet show us that needs are holistic and that the best methods of sustainability require listening and becoming responsive allies to the needs—which almost always include food security, identification and documentation support, interrupting the cycles of gender-based violence, and resources for early childhood development.
We also learn about the ASAP’s founder, the late Priscilla “Scilla” Higham, who was Jef’s mother-in-law. We learn how, in 2003, after driving through the Eastern Cape countryside and finding villages devastated by HIV/AIDS with no help reaching them, Scilla used her incredible tenacity and strong-willed spirit to launch ASAP, leveraging her well-earned social capital to begin investing in these overlooked communities.
This episode is more than a discussion of poverty and trauma. It opens the window, revealing a refreshing ecosystem of quiet yet fierce resilience. Even within the heart-breaking struggles, replete with trauma and cultural limitations, there remains an illuminated spirit, rich with water taps, community gardens, workshops, and healing circles, and the songs of gogos calling the community toward a healthier future.
Reaching the Forgotten reminds us that Social Cohesion comes through resources, yes, but moreover it arrives not from dropping payloads of resources from a bird’s-eye distance, but from the steady, optimistic partnering that renews the fabric of human connection, community know-how, and a greater horizon of opportunities—one story, one person, one village at a time.
