To date, amandla.mobi campaigns have had a direct impact on the lives of at least 11 million Black women from low-income backgrounds. From national campaigns that successfully secured billions for low-income households, to working with local communities, like Diepsloot, who won their campaign to have a bridge built so children could safely cross the river to get to school. Some of our biggest campaign victories include:
- Pushing the government to allocate funds to start fulfilling their promise of free sanitary pads for low-income schools.
- Helping to remove Value-Added Tax on sanitary pads.
- Increasing access to mobile internet by campaigning for regulations and settlements that helped force mobile networks to reduce their anti-poor behaviour.
Scaling our impact – awethu.mobi
Our dream is a Mzansi in which people can hold decision-makers accountable using effective advocacy. As we started winning more and more campaigns, we struggled to keep up with demand from our members, partners and communities, who wanted to work with us to run campaigns. To make sure we were not a bottleneck and to scale our work, we developed and launched awethu.mobi, where anyone can learn and use the amandla.mobi methodology to launch values-aligned campaigns. High impact campaigns launched on awethu.mobi by members, partners and communities include:
- Getting the SABC bill, which threatened the independence of the country’s public broadcaster, withdrawn.
- Keeping South Africa’s schools as alcohol-free zones.
- African Reclaimers Organisation (ARO) got the City of Johannesburg to scrap a levy that threatened the livelihoods of waste reclaimers.
- Helping to secure a top-up in social grants, particularly the child support grant in 2020.
- Enabled 5000 students whose qualifications were being withheld by the Durban University of Technology (DUT) due to NSFAS not paying timeously, to receive their credentials.
