A spark of compassion can ignite an inferno of Ubuntu

I dislike Women’s Month campaigns.

I mean, I get the reasons behind it, but I feel like it runs contrary to the spirit in which South African’s Women’s Day was established.

In 1956, around 20,000 women marched on the Union Buildings in Pretoria to protest apartheid pass laws.

Lilian Ngoyi, Rahima Moosa, Helen Joseph and Sophia Williams led with the rallying cry that when you strike a woman, you strike a rock.

Wathint'Abafazi Wathint'imbokodo!

These days, Women’s Month campaigns celebration National Women’s Day are about highlighting successful women — women doctors, pilots, lawyers, CFOs, CEOs, COOs, harbour masters, politicians — who lead in their fields.

Maybe, news publishers spend a little more effort on the ongoing struggle for women’s rights, for the narrowing of the wage gap, for equal benefits... never for the complete dismantling of the patriarchy, but that’s for another time.

But how many publishers, thought leaders, and media companies take active steps to address these issues they highlight?

How many exit the month of August having made a real, positive impact on the lives of women?

This is the thinking behind the launch of IOL’s Elevate Her campaign.

In 2016 I was part of an incredible editorial campaign at the Cape Argus called The Dignity Project. Through this project, we highlighted the stories of homeless people in Cape Town — their struggles, their challenges, their resilience, and their triumphs.

It was born out of an engagement our erstwhile editor Gasant Abarder had at the Service Dining Rooms in Cape Town, where he was invited to address a group of homeless people about the business of newspapers.

There, they shared with him the beginnings of a Homeless Person’s Charter, the first line of which was simply heart-breaking: “We want to be seen as human.”

And thus The Dignity Project was born.

Now, IOL wants to take this national. As one of the biggest and oldest digital news publications in South Africa, we feel it is our solemn duty to help restore dignity to the people of South Africa, starting with the most vulnerable and overlooked: homeless women.

On these very pages, you will get to meet homeless women of South Africa, learn their stories, read about their struggles, hopes and dreams, and hopefully feel enough compassion for you to honour that first line in the Homeless Person’s Charter scribbled on scrap paper eight years ago — to start seeing them as human.

Part of this editorial campaign is the launch of our collection drive, where we as IOL will be collecting much needed toiletries and other items for the homeless women of the three biggest metros in the country.

Myself and IOL’s Markerting Coordinator, Zurina Morgan, met with some representatives of the outreach organisation U-Turn, which does some fantastic work with the homeless and housing insecure of Cape Town.

We told them about what we planned to do: a collection drive for sanitary towels, toothbrushes, toothpaste, soap, and other toiletries.

The question was posed to us: “How are these women going to wear the sanitary towels? No-one donates underwear to charity.”

I was gobsmacked. How simple a pair of undies seems to us, but how critically vital it can be to a homeless person.

Sure, when you empty out your closet, there are plenty of t-shirts, pants, jeans, jerseys, jackets and blankets that could see better use, but no-one donates their worn-out underwear. And why should they?

So IOL added new pairs of underwear to the list of items included in our Dignity Packs.

With this campaign, we hope to donate at least 300 Dignity Packs to organisations across South Africa, but we need your help to do more.

Elevate Her also doesn’t end with Women’s Month. IOL will continue to collect items on behalf of these organisations and expand our collection drives to include more recipients and more organisations as we grow.

Join us in the fight to restore humanity and dignity to those most in need. Help us light a spark of compassion in the hearts of South Africans so the fire of Ubuntu can rage.

* Lance Witten is the Editor of IOL.

** For more information or to donate, email info@iol.co.za