The Indaba ecosystem
One conviction. Three kinds of work.
The Foundation, the Institute and Ventures share a belief: that the quality of a child's first years should not depend on where that child is born. Each acts on it differently, and each needs the others.
Who does what
Foundation, Institute, Ventures.
The simplest way to hold it: the Foundation funds and stewards, the Institute prepares people and implements, Ventures works on how proven practice can travel.
Mission, funding, stewardship
Indaba Foundation
A philanthropic foundation, established in 2015. It raises and directs support for Community Rooted Education, mentoring and independent evidence, and holds the long view: what has been achieved, what is still an ambition, and the discipline of saying which is which.
Training, pedagogy, implementation
Indaba Institute
The Foundation's training partner, based in Somerset West, South Africa. Home to the EsF CoRE programme and to AMI Montessori diploma and certificate pathways; employer of the facilitators who deliver CoRE in communities.
Innovation, technology, scalable solutions
Indaba Ventures
Works on the question the field work keeps raising: how does excellence reach the children who have never had it? Ventures builds tools, platforms and partnerships intended to carry what the Foundation and Institute have learned beyond one region.
How the work flows
From a gift to a classroom, and back to evidence.
Four stations on one loop, with the adult and the child at the centre. Choose a station to follow the work around.
01 · Indaba Foundation
The Foundation funds
Philanthropic gifts and partnerships are directed to practitioner training, mentoring, the facilitator pathway and independent assessment.
Our mission02 · Indaba Institute
The Institute delivers
Facilitators run CoRE programmes in communities, visit centres, train the next facilitators, and offer AMI pathways to those who want to go further.
Visit the Institute03 · Assessment and observation
Evidence comes back
Independent assessment and practice observation tell all three organisations what is working, and what needs more emphasis.
How we count04 · Indaba Ventures
Ventures asks how it travels
What has been learned in a Kayamandi classroom is examined for how it could reach children elsewhere, without losing what makes it work.
Visit Ventures
Indaba Institute
A home for learning. A commitment to childhood.
Rooted in South Africa, the Institute brings together Montessori teacher education, community-rooted practice and the preparation of adults who care deeply about children. It is founded on the belief that high-quality, transformative early childhood education is the most valuable investment humanity can make in the betterment of a society.
Its current catalogue lists six programmes: AMI diploma courses for ages 0–3, 3–6 and 6–12, an AMI Primary Orientation certificate, an AMI Administrator certificate, and the EsF Community Rooted Education programme. Next cohorts are confirmed with admissions.
Indaba Ventures
Where proven practice learns to travel.
Excellent early childhood practice exists. What is rare is a way to deliver it at scale without diluting it. Indaba Ventures works on that problem through innovation, technology and scalable solutions, so that what is learned in one community can serve children far from it.
Ventures is a separate organisation with its own site. Charitable gifts to the Foundation are described, received and reported only here.
In plain terms
These are functional relationships: who funds, who trains, who builds. Each organisation answers for itself.
This site describes how the three work together. It does not describe governance, ownership or legal relationships between them; each organisation publishes its own.
Wider partnerships
No organisation can do this alone.
CoRE itself is the work of Educateurs sans Frontières, the social-justice arm of the Association Montessori Internationale. In South Africa the first programmes were made possible by Stellenbosch Municipality, which provided transport, catering and venues so that practitioners who would otherwise have had no access to quality training could attend. Independent child assessment is carried out by DataDrive2030.
Over the years the work has been supported by private-sector partners, foundations and individual donors. We name partners here only with their agreement, and describe no relationship as established until it is.
Your place in it
There is more than one way to begin.
Give through the Foundation. Study or partner with the Institute. Follow Ventures if your interest is in how this scales.