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Lesley Ann van Selm - Good Neighbours Winner
Ms Lesley Ann van Selm founded the Khulisa Crime Prevention Initiative 13 years ago using African stories to instil morals among offenders. Today Khulisa is a successful Section 21 (not-for-profit) company making a unique contribution to a safer South Africa now and in the future.
Fuelled by her passion for working with marginalised people and armed only with her marketing expertise, experience in building companies for a new South Africa, and a genuine belief in the importance of inter-cultural dialogue, Ms Van Selm established Khulisa.
Here she developed the concept of African stories for morals into a series of crime prevention and community development interventions aimed at offenders in prisons, ex-offenders and at-risk youth and vulnerable children in communities. These interventions aim to restore their self esteem, prevent crime and reduce recidivism, make restitution, and offer socially responsible alternatives to gangs, drugs and crime. Those affected by crime are also included to help them overcome hurt and anger and reconcile with offenders who wished to make amends.
Ms Van Selm built a strong team of people - of whom 94% is women - to manage the company where the cycle of crime is understood and programmes are targeted to address key issues and problems with deep cultural roots. Thousands of South Africans have turned their lives around as a result of their involvement with Khulisa.
Offenders who graduate from Khulisa’s programmes do not return to society to cause further harm, but rather to compensate for their past behaviour by helping other South Africans.
In a country under the constant threat of crime and violence and riddled with widespread fear, national recidivism rates among offenders are high with a national statistic of between 80 – 90%. In contrast, statistics show only 18% of those offenders who have been through Khulisa programmes re-offend.
Ex-offenders and young people, especially those at-risk of involvement in crime, are guided not to engage in crime, but to rather focus their attention on adding value to their communities and understanding the spirit of Ubuntu. There are, for instance, ex-offenders working in teams of three impacting positively on as many as 300 school children in one term through the delivery of drugs or crime awareness programmes.
Khulisa currently runs over 230 such community projects that, directly and indirectly, reaches 312,000 South Africans. These include crèches, shelters for orphans and abused children, community vegetable gardens, environmental projects and sports/cultural groups. Several of these projects have led to self-sustainability. Nurturing and supporting entrepreneurism is fundamental to all programmes.
As a result of an aggressive fundraising strategy programmes are taken into the neediest areas of South Africa and multi-million rand funding received from the European Union will result in Khulisa mediating 2,500 restorative justice cases in the next two years. It is also a target to assist a minimum of 200 entrepreneurs to set up their own micro-enterprises within the next 24 months.
