The Domino Foundation

ABOUT US

The Domino Foundation is a non-profit organisation that creates essential structures geared towards supporting people, projects and programmes that are meeting the needs of individuals and communities physically, emotionally, cognitively and spiritually through mercy, justice and empowerment.

We desire to see individuals and communities within South Africa living with dignity, justice, hope and purpose. Through acts of mercy, combating injustice and empowering lives, The Domino Foundation works to see individuals and communities transformed.

VISION

We desire to see individuals and communities within South Africa living with dignity, justice, hope and purpose.

Three Pillars of Nation Transformation

RELIEF

The Platform to succeed

JUSTICE

The Environment to succeed

EMPOWERMENT

The Ability to succeed

Three Pillars of The Domino Foundation

RELIEF

The Platform to succeed: Aiding in the relief of people’s and communities’ needs.

JUSTICE

The Ability to succeed: Empowering people for a better future.

EMPOWERMENT

The Environment to succeed: Contending for justice, people and communities.

The Domino Foundation runs focused interventions to holistically support and empower communities to be active participants in our society. We believe that by addressing three key pillars, effective social change can be achieved.

• Social Charity – to help those in need.
• Social Justice – to give orphaned children and vulnerable people an equal and fair chance in life.
• Social Entrepreneurship – using economic development to empower a community.

PROGRAMMES

Babies Homes

While the children are in our homes, we ensure that they have 24 hour care in a holistically safe environment which caters to their physical, emotional, cognitive and spiritual needs. Our desire is to provide as stable a home-life for these little people as we can so that their transition into their adoptive families is as easy as possible. To ensure that the children have a sound start in their young lives, we:

• liaise with Durban Child Welfare to provide 24 hour-a-day care for all children entrusted to us
• facilitate contact between children and potential adoptive parents
• work with medical and healthcare professionals
• facilitate, co-operate and network with other babies’ homes to implement ‘best practices’
• challenge legislation and processes to safeguard justice for abandoned babies
• engage with volunteers, financial and non-financial donors and other stakeholders
• monitor and evaluate activities to ensure we remain relevant and effective in our vision.

Feeding

To fulfil our vision and our specific Christian mandate, we feed those in our community who are going hungry through a crisis or circumstances beyond their control. In doing so, we enhance learning through meeting children’s physical need for health and balanced nutrition. We support crèches, schools, churches, counselling centres, aftercare programmes, and youth holiday clubs in this enterprise. We look to create opportunities for volunteers to feed the hungry in poorly resourced communities. Our activities include but are not limited to:

• the Crèche Feeding Project which provides nutritious meals to children at crèches every week day, which has proved to encourage attendance and achieve developmental milestones
• the School Sandwich Project through which sandwiches are delivered to school children who would otherwise have no lunch, providing ‘food for thought’. Schools identify children who need feeding and distribute sandwiches delivered by Domino Feeding programme
• food parcels for families in crisis who are identified by local schools in the Durban North community and the Door of Hope Counselling Centre. The majority of these families are either households where breadwinners have been retrenched or where single mothers are battling to provide for the children. Food parcels are put together and discreetly distributed to these families as needed
• monitoring and evaluation to ensure that our programmes remain relevant and effective evaluate and monitor for consistent impact.

Early Childhood Development

The Domino Foundation’s ECD programme assists ECD centres become sustainable businesses to make a lasting economic and educational impact in the community through empowering the owners with necessary business management skills to run profitable and quality-driven enterprises. It also upgrades the skills of ECD owners to go beyond being care-givers for children and to incorporate critical early childhood development into their programmes. We walk alongside ECD centre owners through practical, on-site interventions to ensure that business and educational aspects are implemented to meet the nutritional, cognitive, social, behavioural and educational needs of children in their formative years. It is critical that there is effective preparation of young children for school readiness through foundational learning phase.

We aim to create ECD centres that are more conducive to learning by improving the physical environment the supply of playground equipment, through building projects, painting and general renovations. The ECD programme acts as intermediary to facilitate necessary changes for as many ECD centres as possible to be registered with the Department of Social Development and qualify for government funding to aid in sustainability. We ensure necessary monitoring and evaluation of all activities and interventions aimed at learners.

Life Skills

We believe that learners are empowered by the knowledge that they are unique, special and of value to themselves and others. We seek to develop within the individual the realisation that they have a destiny and can rise above their challenging circumstances. To help the children move towards that destiny, we empower them to develop healthy relationships, based on respect, accountability and honour and help them develop a personal vision to plan for a future without HIV/AIDS. We help individuals realise their capacity as future leaders and encourage a team approach.

The programme aims to meet with each learner on a one-on-one basis to identify social problems and seeks ways to fill any gaps in counselling, therapy and wholeness of the learner. We ensure that every child is able to read and write in their home language and English. We look for ways to address the lack of after-school recreational activities by creating a safe place for learners to have fun and to participate in extra-mural activities and create in poorly resourced schools an environment more conducive to learning by improving the physical spaces. The programme supports educators, school management and learners though encouragement, motivation and networking opportunities so that they do not feel alone in their challenging circumstances. We also provide a context for student social workers to gain field experience and we monitor and evaluate all activities to ensure relevance and effectiveness.

Skills Development

The programme supports and walks alongside candidates through a mentorship programme to ensure they have the confidence, knowledge and tools required to seek employment. To ensure relevance and effectiveness, all activities are monitored and evaluated. The programme’s activities include:

• the Domino Bursary Fund which was set up to co-ordinate the financial management of each student. Money is distributed to each candidate based on an assessment by our qualified programme co-ordinators. Candidates are interviewed and each situation critically assessed to determine a tailor-made funding plan for further study. As each situation varies, the tailor-made funding plan also makes provision for a living allowance (university residence and/or monthly allowance), a monthly travel allowance (transportation) and an allowance for books and resources (study resources).
• LIFE eQUIP. We are developing an online learning portal for each candidate to complete a one year Life eQuip Course parallel to their studies. This course has been specifically designed to incorporate essential life skills and tools to assist in job seeking, household budget planning, CV writing and other critical life lessons.
• the mentorship programme. At the core of our programme is one-to-one mentoring that takes place between the student and our trained field workers. Each candidate will be assigned a mentor who will walk alongside the student to support, assist and guide them throughout their studies. Meeting regularly with the bursary recipients and providing advice and guidance, our trained mentors ensure each student is implementing the skills learned through our online eQuip portal and is attending classes. Students’ performance is monitored, their student costs overseen.
• research and evaluation. In order to ensure that the programme remains relevant and effective, we evaluate and monitor the programme for consistent impact.

Recycle Swop Shop

By offering a hand-up rather than a hand-out, we hope to encourage the healthy principles of responsibility and ownership. The programme aims to break the mentality of hopelessness by igniting the belief that individuals can add value to their families, schools and the greater community. We want to instill an understanding of recycling and caring for the environment. In the process, we desire to beautify the area, reduce the chance of disease, provide safe areas of play and inspire a sense of pride and care for the community. The Domino Foundation Recycle Swop Shop’s activities include:

• the Swop Shops. The Domino Foundation Swop Shops operate once a week at different locations across the province. In exchange for tokens, community members bring bags of recyclable waste (paper, tin and plastic) collected from around the informal settlement. The tokens are used to ‘purchase’ essential personal and household items (clothes, food and school resources) from the shops.
• recycling. Recyclable material is weighed, bundled and sold to organisations that recycle the raw materials. This reduces the community’s carbon footprint and waste products and combats pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.
• education. At the core of our activities is the desire to educate the population on the importance of environmental conservation. Through activation workshops at schools, we educate on environmental awareness, the recycling process and importance of reducing waste and conserving natural resources.
• research and evaluation. In order to ensure that the programme remains relevant and effective, we evaluate and monitor the programme for consistent impact.

Red Light

We have a desire to reach out and identify sex-trafficked survivors and vulnerable groups and to refer individuals into a restoration programme, either with Red Light or network partners.

The second phase of the programme’s operations is to restore individuals to health and wholeness through individualised and group rehabilitation programmes. When that has been achieved, the survivors are released and supported through our reintegration programme, which ensures they have the confidence, knowledge, skills and tools required to seek employment. We report human-trafficking and suspicious related activities and train others to identify and assist in this. All our activities are monitored and evaluated to ensure relevance and effectiveness.

At the heart of Red Light is the desire to reach out and assist survivors of human trafficking and exploited sex workers who feel they cannot exit the industry due to social and economic circumstances. Red Lights programs are centered in LOVE and the word of God to release our beneficiaries into sustainable lives of FREEDOM and HOPE

Donation Options

DONATING – the act of freely offering financial or non-financial assistance. We believe in mutually-beneficial relationships. That’s it – a relationship. A relationship is an ongoing partnership between two organisations/individuals working towards a common goal.

Our approach is simple

By leveraging over a decade long track record of community upliftment, we have developed specific and individualised solutions for businesses and individuals to actively engage in Social Change.

At The Domino Foundation we know that donations take many shapes and forms and depending on your capacity, available resources and spheres of influence that you’re in, your donation could truly mean the life-line for some of our programmes.

For practitioners seeking specific alignment with company CSI policies,or individuals who have a heart for a specific impact area, we have a variety of programmes across the spectrum that satisfy Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Investment goals.

We can provide:

• Thank you letter
• Section 18 A tax receipt
• Documentation: reports, affidavits and records
• Certification: We are certified for SED, ED and SKILLS DEVELOPMENT spend

Currently the #DominoEffect of changed lives changing lives, is continued through a number of donation opportunities:

EFT / Once Off Payment

Once-off deposits can be made to our bank account, details below:

• BANK: First National Bank, Durban North
• BRANCH CODE: 220426
• ACCOUNT NAME: The Domino Foundation
• ACCOUNT NUMBER: 62070191962
• SWIFT NUMBER: FIRNZAJJ
• *REFERENCE: Indicate which programme you would like to support.

Debit Order

Monthly financial contributions are our life-lines and allow us to effectively run our programmes to transform the community. You can “adopt-a-cot” at our babies home, put a child through school or even finance daily meals for the underprivileged.

SMS from your mobile phone

An easy way to support our programmes is by donating via SMS. Alternatively, if your company, church or even yourself are celebrating with a function, why not display our SMS donation line!

Simply SMS the word ‘DOMINO‘ to 48715 at a cost of R10 per message and you’re done!

Products and Services

Do you know someone or does your company produce items that we utilize within our programmes on a monthly basis? Such as baby products, food items, clothing, toiletries or can you offer services that would benefit our organization? ie. Legal, graphic design, HR, gardening services etc.

B-BBEE Contributions

The Domino Foundation is optimally positioned within the latest B-BBEE codes, to provide maximum assistance for both QSE and generic enterprises. We have B-BBEE Certification for SED, ED and SKILLS DEVELOPMENT spend and already helping a number of businesses meet their BEE objectives.

MySchool Programme

Are you a MySchool user and is The Domino Foundation a beneficiary? Joining the MySchool Programme is 100% free and so is the support. By simply swiping your MySchool card when you shop at any Woolworths or participating outlet, The Domino Foundation receives funds at NO COST TO YOU!

Volunteers

VOLUNTEERISM – the act of freely offering to undertake a task. At The Domino Foundation we know that volunteerism takes many shapes and forms and depending on your availability, volunteering can mean a once off asssitance or a weekly commitment.

Our approach is simple

All our community transformation programmes aim to empower, uplift and transform lives. One changed life impacts other lives and those, in turn, ultimately, through the #DominoEffect, impact and change the whole nation.

It is a known fact that Volunteers add that “something special” to the work that we do and we would be totally lost without them. From pouring their hearts out and loving on the individual children to being powerful voices advocating our causes, volunteers are invaluable and are very much needed throughout our programmes.

Currently the #DominoEffect of changed lives changing lives, is continued through a number of volunteer options:

Ad Hoc / Once Off

We host a number of fundraisers, sporting events and advocacy opportunities throughout the year and need some helping hands for once-off occasions. Alternatively, are you just curious about getting involved and can only spare one day, right now?

Regular / Committed

Regular, committed volunteers allow us to plan programme schedules and activities effectively and allows us to add those extra-special touches to our programmes. This involves fitting into a current volunteer roster or assisting at specific prearranged times.

Community Service

We have an exciting jam-packed programme for students to accumulate hours for school & varsity requirements. With four, 5 day community service work weeks scheduled during the school holidays, students have the option of gaining 100 community service hours – but hurry register now before they fill up!

Schools Programme

Are you an interact group looking for an organisation to support as part of your extramural activity? or are you a class teacher looking at encouraging your kiddies to get involved and give back to their community? We co-ordinate termly collection drives, fun group activities and opportunities for involvement.

Impact Days

Looking for ways to get your staff involved or are you seeking to bring a group and make a difference? Then Domino Impact Days are perfect for you. Your team will feel connected to the projects you support and will make a greater impact with focused activities. We have a range of impact days throughout the year where we invite teams to participate in events, fundraisers and work days.

International Volunteers

Are you an international volunteer looking to get involved for an extended period of time? We are currently working on some exciting packages, of varying length and impact just for you. From 2 weeks abroad to 6 month opportunities, we will keep you updated with our progress and let you know when we are ready to launch The Domino Foundation international volunteer programme.