POPUP’s theme for 2024 was Hope: Revealed, Restored and Released. It’s a polarising concept. You either love it because it oozes potential, or you hate it because it is fluffy and impossible to measure, rendering it meaningless. Orchestrating a symphony from this tension was our mission. Spoiler Alert: We nailed it!
Revealing Hope
Hope is powerful in its simplicity. It is the conviction that tomorrow can be better than today. The challenge is context. ‘Obviously, for you, tomorrow can be better than today; that’s not my reality.’ This statement is easily refuted by the testimony of someone like me who was once hopeless but has discovered the possibilities waiting in tomorrow.
POPUP has so many of these radical stories of hope. This year, we got better at sharing them. Here are a couple of testimonies that do one thing very well… reveal how close Hope is.
Restoring Hope
Since 2021, we have been on a soap box about the power of Impact Eco-Systems. Nowhere is this truer than in restoring hope. Once someone sees the possibility of tomorrow, they require conviction that they can harness it. In the words of Alan Platt, ‘Good news is only good news if it’s good news, and it’s only good news if it includes me.’
We can make this happen by partnering with training providers, government, employers, BEE partners, funders, and volunteers. We also do so more effectively and efficiently than ever before. It takes a village to restore hope; we are so grateful for ours. The value of synergy is surprising! We’re grateful to realise more of it every day.
We have reached incredible peaks this year with great partners anchoring our ropes. Figure 1 below shows our Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) compared to 2022 as a baseline (100%). We have been undergoing a significant turnaround as an organisation. During 2023, we made some challenging decisions to refocus our work and drive efficiencies in delivering our stated objectives (economic contribution of our learners). The graph reflects this. The 2023 bars, in some instances, move in the wrong direction, with arguably the leading indicator, ‘Cost per Skill,’ confirming we are on the right track.
In 2024, we saw significant improvements in every key metric expected during this consolidation phase. There is a slight decrease in ‘Number of Learners’ as we focus on quality and ultimate outcomes— ‘Placement %’.
Figure 1 – POPUP KPIs compared to 2022 Levels
These results are incredibly encouraging. We are deeply grateful to our partners and supporters who helped us through this consolidation phase. Such seasons are always uncomfortable and unknowable, but one thing we are sure of is that we could not have navigated them successfully without your support.
Releasing Hope
We died to many things in 2023. We acknowledged sunk costs and terminated unsustainable projects. This blossomed into many new initiatives in 2024 as we focussed our energy and priorities on our core activities. The most notable are mentioned below.
- 25th Celebration Event – 12 June 2024
We celebrated 25 years of impact with 365 partners, supporters, and funders. This will become an annual event. An opportunity for all our stakeholders to celebrate the impact of our collective effort. We hope to have 550 spaces available next year.
Book the date: 6 June 2025. For more details please contact [email protected]
- 2023 Impact Report
Our first-ever Impact report was published in June. This was a bold step to improve our external accountability and transparency in our work. We have improved dramatically and look forward to incremental annual improvement in this reporting.
The 2023 report is available on our website: https://popup.co.za/about-us/#annualreport
- Whole City Initiative
We started this initiative in 2023 to bring NPO leaders of Tshwane together in a monthly forum to build relationships, transfer skills, support, and collaborate. The initiative is growing. The hope for a better city drives us. This requires the NPO sector to improve collaboration to drive efficiency and effective outcomes. We are excited by the potential and the progress. 2025 holds promise as these relationships begin to mature.
If you are an NPO leader in Tshwane and want to learn more, email [email protected].
- Skills Journey (Our Weekly Podcast)
This is one example of such a collaboration. With Impact 103, we launched a podcast in January 2024. We are about to finish our second season. It explores the power of skills to change our world. We share practical insights through interviews and case studies to tackle some of the biggest myths regarding skills, work and life.
It is available on our website: www.popup.co.za.
https://open.spotify.com/show/4HRegdy6U85yj6rf8jGH0V
https://podcasts.apple.com/za/podcast/popup-skills-journey/id1743389853
A Hopeful Future
We look forward to 2025 and are hopeful that it will be even better than 2024, not in a fluffy, nondescript kind of way, but from the conviction that we continue to build on a strong foundation. We have set a challenging target to grow our placements from 230 to 1000 in 2025. This will not be possible without partners who also hope for a better future where every person is treated with dignity, lives with significance, and makes a positive contribution.
Our conviction drives us. Whole cities are within our grasp. It takes but a few ‘mighty men’, brave enough to slay giants. I hope you are one of them.
I hope you will join us in shaping tomorrow’s workforce.