Your Forum is continuing to campaign for improved national and provincial budgets for social welfare services delivered by NPOs. Minister of Finance Pravin Gordhan has invited people to send him suggestions for the national budget, and we propose to do just that! Let's deluge him with suggestions from our sector while he prepares his budget speech for 17 February!

Please send the MInister a message calling for a large allocation for every province, to enable all of them to improve funding for their social welfare NPO partners. This must be a conditional grant - i.e. a ring-fenced allocation that has to be spent as specified, and cannot be diverted into health services, or go into the provincial pot to be used as the provincial government chooses. In your message, please make a brief but strong statement about what your organisation does, and what the effect is on the people you serve of your services being inadequately funded. If you have had to shut down or cut back a service, please highlight this.

You can send the message via the Treasury website, on www.treasury.gov.za, via the "Budget Tips for 2010" button which is near the top of the page.

If each organisation takes five minutes to do this before the end of next week - i.e. by Friday 29 January - we can create a huge volume of messages that should at very least get the honourable Minister thinking while he prepares his speech. We will also be suggesting this strategy to our National Forum in the hope that all other Provincial Forums will do likewise. Please let me know when you have sent your message so that we can keep track of the numbers.

UNITED WE STAND!! THANK YOU FOR YOUR PARTICIPATION!!

Best wishes,

Jackie Loffell
Coordinator
082-454-0991

---

Bookmark this article: