ACTION Support Centre

Contact Information

• Where – South Africa (Southern Africa)
• Website – www.actionsupportcentre.co.za/
• Contact Person – Charity Mungweme
• Email – charitymungweme@asc.org.za
• Address – 4 Clamart House, Melville, Johannesburg, South Africa
• Other – farai@ccmt.co.zw, ccmt@ecoweb.co.zw

Areas of Expertise

The ACTION Support Centre has expertise in a range of areas, including:

• Dialogue
• Mediation and Negotiation

Main Aims and Objectives

The ASC aims to create and explore opportunities that strengthen partnerships horizontally amongst civil society formations and between civil society and the stakeholders from within government and the private sector that affect the lives of the communities they are working with. These new forms of innovative collaborative partnership are intended to enable grassroots civil society to engage more effectively with policy makers at national, regional and international levels.

• Skills and Strategies for Change (SSC) – uses a conflict transformation approach to facilitate training and learning processes with individuals, organisations and communities across the African continent, to inform, empower, connect and strengthen a pool of active Conflict Transformation Practitioners.
• Solidarity and Transformation Agenda (STA) – supports communities in the region through transformative workshops, campaigning, strengthening networks and promoting functional partnerships. STA supports initiatives that recognise that transformation requires a collective effort from everybody committed to peace, democracy and human and peoples rights and a deepened understanding of people-to-people solidarity.

Where and with Whom

ACTION has regional bases in Cambodia, Philippines, Guatemala, and South Africa where the ASC is based and strategic partnerships with organisations in Asia, across Africa and the Americas, and in the European Community.

Main Activities in the Field of Conflict Transformation

African Insider Mediators Platform AIMP

• Support Base for practicing mediators
• Enhancing national and regional internal mediation capacity
• Strengthening local ownership

Proudly African Campaign The Proudly African Campaign is a CALL TO ACTION to all African people across Africa and around the world to begin to think and act creatively and collectively and finds solutions to Africa’s numerous challenges. The Campaign seeks to give all Africans, including those in the Diaspora an opportunity to engage in robust and honest debates around Africa’s opportunities and challenges. This also includes debates around Africa’s position in the global socio-economic and political economy and the future Africans seeks for themselves including ideas around Pan-. The Campaign has Patrons in Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe, local structures in many parts of Africa and around the world and is supported by a broad range of progressive civil society and individual activists. Drums of Change The Drums of Change quarterly newsletter provides a platform for community voices to be heard and invites comments from individuals, network partners and leading thinkers on recent policy discussions and decisions, in an effort to reduce the gap between policy makers and those they affect. The newsletter is circulated widely within South Africa, regionally and through the continent more broadly. Drums seeks to bring thematic areas of focus emerging from our networks to the fore. Peace, Conflict and Security in the post 2015 Development Agenda The ACTION Support Centre, in collaboration with Saferworld, hosted a one-day seminar on the 26th of February at the University of the Witwatersrand to discuss peace and security issues in the Post-2015 Development Agenda. The seminar brought together a number of prominent people that have worked in the development field, civil society organisations, women’s organisations and academics. Speakers included Robert Parker, the Director of Policy and Communications from Saferworld, Adane Ghebremeskel from SADC Council of NGO’s and Richard Smith from the ACTION Support Centre. Regional Learning Exchange The Regional Learning Exchange combined information and discussion workshops focus on key regional issues including strategic sites visits. These exchanges have focused on Zimbabwe, Swaziland, Mozambique, and Democratic Republic of Congo. Regional delegates are drawn from Soweto Concerned Residence (SCR)-South Africa, Swaziland Coalition (SCCCO)-Swaziland, Swaziland Young Women’s Network (SYWN)-Swaziland, Youth Initiative for Democracy in Zimbabwe (YIDEZ)-Zimbabwe, PROPAZ-Mozambique, Forum Mulher-Mozambique and Muinda Peace Project in Zimbabwe. Local Peace Committees The origins of Local Peace Committees in South Africa date back to a national initiative during the end of apartheid and the transition towards democracy. Most of these structures have however collapsed. Reasons for this vary from structure to structure. The ASC together with its partnership and grassroots activists, through its initiatives such as the community strengthening capacity building and conflict transformation training workshops, anti-xenophobia schools’ project and the cultural diversity programme, has over the past years, worked on establishing and strengthening Local Peace Committees. South African Somali Women’s Network The concept of SASOWNET was born out of a perceived lack of wide scale Somali women’s participation within various decision-making and consultative arenas’. This is attributed to a feeling of marginalization and a lack of confidence to enter a traditionally male-dominated decision-making space. Swaziland Democracy Campaign The Swaziland Democracy Campaign is a broad coalition of progressive organisations inside Swaziland and in South Africa united around the demand for multiparty democracy in Swaziland. It is a campaign born of the organised representatives of the struggling people of Swaziland, always acting in tandem with the momentum inside the country and guided by their political objectives. Somali Solidarity Campaign The ACTION Support Centre launched the Somali Solidarity Campaign in October in 2011 as part of a long-term commitment to promote and achieve sustainable peace in the Somali Region. The Campaign was launched in response to ongoing violence and conflict in the Somali Region, and the ASC’s commitment to promote peace and development. It is through this campaign that support can be mobilised for and solidarity given to the Somali people. The Zimbabwe Solidarity Forum The Zimbabwe Solidarity Forum (ZSF) is a network of progressive South African civil society organisations that include youth, women, labour, faith-based, human rights and student formations in South Africa and across the region.The forum was established in the late 1990s and was consolidated in 2004. Over the past years the network has grown rapidly in size and influence, and the forum has effectively contributed towards greater understanding of the crisis and challenges in Zimbabwe within organisations and within the broader South African and regional communities.