DOCKDA Rural Development Agency

Charity profile

DOCKDA partners with community based organisations to support their response to the needs in their communities. 

DOCKDA's acronym stands for Development of Community Knowledge and Direct Access. Development of Community Knowledge recognises through the tools of the ABCD approach to community development that communities have their own skills, resources and knowledge of their situation and with support to these organisations with opportunities for training, peer learning, community dialogues and mentorship and monitoring community based organisations will be catalysts of positive change in their communities. Direct Access speaks to giving community based organisations access to resources such as small financial grants, donations of goods and services and access to networks of other developmental organisations that also offer the community based organisations opportunities for learning and growth. 

Home-based carers/ community care workers are the unrecognised heros of rural and urban communities across South Africa. Community based organisations and community care workers are seeing to needs in their community amoungst the most vulnerable of households and respond with primary health care, provide food to those that are hungry, offer gender based violence prevention and response programmes, after school and holiday programmes for children and youth and try to link their beneficiaries to social support. The overwhelming majority of community care workers are women and earn a very small stipend from goverment departments or work as volunteers in their organisations. DOCKDA's support gives opportunities for community based organisations to have the resources to implement their programmes, develop their infrastructure and elevate the recognition within their communities of the role of community care workers as changemakers in their communities.