The Greenlight Office will provide the following support and service to its members:

• Methodology and metrics, as developed and localised for the South African and African context.
• Induction training on the Greenlight methodology and metrics.
• List of facilitators trained to work with the Greenlight approach.
• Online technology platform.
• Data and information shared via the Greenlight Movement website.
• Forums, webinars, and conferences that meet to discuss learnings and insights, and to collaborate.
• Access to the referral pathways via the national Greenlight network.

The benefits of the Greenlight Movement and Forum include:

• A collaboration space for organisations working to develop agency, independence, and dignity in Africa.
• Enabling organisations to measure social impact against a common framework.
• Aggregation of data that offers a better perspective of the real issues at hand.
• The more policy-relevant information there is available, the better equipped policy-makers will be to reduce poverty and other societal ills.
• Referral pathways that will ultimately inform stakeholders of priority areas for engagement.
• The establishment of a community of practice.
• Enabling organisations to collectively engage in the evolution of a metric that is gaining traction in Africa.

The Greenlight Office is committed to being:

• An advocate for the role of people who are socio-economically disadvantaged in taking control of their own lives
• Supportive of people-driven development
• Pro-choice, i.e. non-judgmental of the end-clients’ choices (the beneficiaries we all serve)
• Enabling and catalytic
• Unbiased to and independent of members’ programmes
• Transparent and driven by value-add

Registration details

Name: The Greenlight Office NPC
Reg number: 2016/469745/08
PBO number: 930071661

Directors

Tracey Chambers – CEO and Co-Founder: Taking Care of Business and GROW Educare Centres
Gary Shearer – Independent Philanthropy Professional, The Saville Foundation
Laura Bergh – Chief Enabler for The Greenlight Office, and Independent Professional for Sustainability Leadership and Research

The Greenlight Office is funded by The Saville Foundation, Allan & Gill Gray Foundation, and Rising Tide Foundation, who are all actively participating in this initiative.

The social methodology Plano de Acao Familiar (The Family Action Plan), a pioneer in the world in intersectorial work to combat poverty, was developed by Vera Cordeiro, a Brazilian social entrepreneur and physician, and her team from Saúde Criança (now Instituto Dara). She is founder and chairwoman of the Dara Institute and is an Ashoka Fellow, Skoll Foundation recipient, Schwab Foundation social entrepreneur, Avina leader, and Ashoka World Council member.

This social methodology is continuously improved with the support of several international organizations, together with national and international companies, including McKinsey Company. This work has transformed the lives of thousands in Brazil and around the world for over 30 years.

This work was taken on by Martin Burt of Fundacion Paraguaya who innovated it into the Poverty Stoplight approach and started to expand it to other countries. Martin is a Paraguayan social entrepreneur, author, and former mayor of Asunción in Paraguay.

The methodology was brought to South Africa in 2014 by Tracey Chambers, co-founder of The Clothing Bank, The Appliance Bank, and Grow ECD. She is an award-winning Schwab Foundation social entrepreneur and an Ashoka fellow.

In 2014, together with Laura Bergh, The Clothing Bank (an already highly successful social enterprise) customised and localised the accompanying metric for a South African context and integrated the approach into their development cycle. They built a new change framework that informed the organisation on the way forward, with huge success. The Clothing Bank, being wholly committed to this approach, wanted to share their experience with other non-profits, social enterprises and interested parties in order to transfer knowledge and replicate success across South Africa. They incubated The Poverty Stoplight Office (SA) from 2014-2017, which was then spun off as a separate legal entity in November 2016. In July 2019, the company name was changed to The Greenlight Office and it now runs as an independent non-profit company (NPC) using the Greenlight approach.