To be the leading social facilitator of meaningful community participation in poverty
eradication and social upliftment programmes in rural & peri–urban areas.
NARDEP objective is to facilitate social-emotional healing, mobilisation, education, training and deployment of a critical mass of in-reach community development professionals that are ICT literate, including Community Development Practitioners(CDP), Project Managers and leaders.
The CDPs, Project Managers and Community Leaders join hands to form National Business Education Community Organisations(NABECOs). The NABECO is an in-reach social
infra-structure support platform to:
- Bridge the gap between rural and peri-urban communities and their social investment partners in the metropolitan areas
- Drive the poverty eradication programmes; serve as watchdog, director, visionaries etc for the respective community
- Enter into partnerships with revenue generating profit share schemes in order to gain financial independence, create employment locally and ensure sustainability of local enterprise projects and
- Seek seed funds to kick start the revenue generatin
g profit share schemes.
The National Rural Development Education Programme (NARDEP) is a component of Ingwapele Technology, an Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Company that provides technology infra-structure and services for local businesses, e.g. computer services, computer training, and internet access for the entire community.
NARDEP, on the other hand, provides a socio-economic infra-structure support platform for local enterprises, co-operatives and community projects. Ingwapele has evidence that technological infrastructure provision needs a social infra-structure support platform to mobilize communities to participate meaningfully and benefit from ICT infrastructure.
The goal of combining the ICT infra-structure and the social infrastructure support platforms is to promote efficiency, broaden access to markets, speed up service delivery, optimize return on investment, ensure self-reliance and sustainability of local enterprises through bridging the digital divide, promoting use of ICTs to run businesses, promoting web based education etc.
NARDEP undertakes research to inform design of innovative models that seek to redress contemporary socio-economic challenges in rural and peri-urban communities, in particular poverty eradication. NARDEP provides solid social infra-structure support platforms to facilitate meaningful participation of entire communities in local economic development programmes and poverty eradication. The combination of the Ingwapele with the NARDEP support platform is strategic and complimentary. Both Ingwapele and NARDEP support platforms are in-reach. In reach, in this context, refers to local personnel that are recruited from within, deployed by and report to the community concerned.
The in-reach support platform interfaces with the outreach deployed by Social Investment Stakeholders (i.e. Public Sector and Parastatal Organisations, Corporate Social Investment Foundations, Donor Agencies, NGOs, Institutions of learning and other) forming a bridge that connects them for free flow of information, communication, sharing of resources, knowledge, integration and coordination of service delivery etc.
While the NARDEP social infra–structure support platform facilitates the education and training of in-reach Community Development Practitioners and National Business Education Community Organizations (NABECOs), the Ingwapele ICT Infra-structure consisting of computer labs and internet connectivity facilitates computer literacy, internet surfing and web based education. This is the foundation and it serves to connect communities with their respective outreach partners and/or with each other to increase capacity and share resources.
The community ’in-reach’ social infra-structure support platform is an essential component of poverty eradication and social up-liftment programmes because it facilitates a link that is often missing. This link gives effect to meaningful community participation in planning, initiation, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of projects, thus ensuring sustainability of social and economic initiatives. By so doing, it ensures Return-On Investment of social fund and builds sustainable community organizations for re-investment opportunities. The goal is to grow and develop economically sound, socially balanced and sustainable rural communities.
The mission of NARDEP is to prepare communities to participate meaningfully in Social Investment projects, introduced in their communities by Corporate(CSI), Public Sector and Parastatal Organisations(PSI), Donor, and other social investment stakeholders for poverty eradication and social upliftment through:
- Conducting research and generate knowledge on ways and means of unleashing the potential in-reach capacity inherent in communities
- Conducting social - emotional workshops to heal community as a whole from deep trauma suffered during the brutal era of colonial/ apartheid dispensation, restore their self worth, identity, dignity, self esteem and confidence
- Facilitating education and training support for personnel and initiators of local economic ventures, projects and enterprises to become functional, efficient, productive, self reliant
- Conducting workshops to change culture and mindset of dependency on jobs to culture of local enterprise development
- Introducing business norms and standards of governance, quality assurance, accountability etc
- Forming partnerships between the various social investment stakeholders to promote integration and coordination of service delivery
- Mobilising community’s own collective labour power to promote efficiency, increase productivity and ensure self reliance and sustainability of ventures
- Leveraging the community’s collective purchasing power to off-set un-necessary hyper-inflation on frequently bought products
- Bridging the digital divide and narrow the gap between CSI, PSI, Donor etc in urban areas and their beneficiaries in rural and peri-urban area.
Vision 
