Paying it forward - a case study

Touwsranten Primary School, which received free wireless broadband, thanks to a private sponsor and Digital Village

In a connected world our actions are often like a stone, thrown into a pond. Even very small stones will ripple across the entire surface of big bodies of water - moving reeds and floating object far away from the original source.

The same happens in our lives with many of our deeds, both the good ones, as well as the bad ones. "Playing it forward" is a term that is often used for purposefully propagating a good deed, but making sure that its effects get passed on to others, in the hope that the process will repeat.

Alongside our commercial business, we have a registered non-profit company called Digital Village that is aimed at providing free internet to needy schools and community organizations. This initiative is supported by donor funding, in partnership with commercial businesses and individuals that believe in playing it forward. It is built upon the principle of public-private co-operation on a broad front.

Recently we had a project which illustrated very nicely how a good deed from the business sector played itself forward in a way which benefited more recipients than anticipated - and then returned to to the business community with interest.

Here is how it happened:

A few months ago an international businessman who resides on the Garden Route part-time, made a donation of a large amount of excess wireless internet equipment to Digital Village. Some of this equipment was then used to provide a free internet installation to Touwsranten Primary School - a well-run, but somewhat neglected school in a rural region, just outside the small village of Hoekwil.

It was soon discovered that the Seven Passes Initiative had just recently set up a small container-based office, just a short distance away. Our commercial company had just sold two new computers to Seven Passes, but there was no connectivity. This seemed to be a vitally-important need, since Seven Passes was doing community work that nobody else does - and it has already demonstrated itself as an unusually successful partnership between local farmers and businessmen, and community leaders.

Ryan Philander, one of the management team explained that the Seven Passes Initiative is a youth development and educational organisation that seeks to prevent youth involvement in crime through providing quality after school care. They do this through homework clubs and other educational activities, including sport, music and drama.

Part of their association with the school lay in the fact that Seven Passes was providing computer lessons for the community in the school's computer lab - a valuable outreach gesture which benefited all parties concerned. The Initiative also works towards long-term poverty alleviation through raising the educational level of the community.

The container office of the Seven Passes Initiative

The problem was that the Seven Passes office did not have line of sight to any wireless internet repeaters on a sponsored network. But the container could just barely see the Touwsranten school, where a a Digital Village installation was about to be scheduled. Accordingly, it was decided to set up the Touwsranten school as a community internet hotspot, as well as wireless internet repeater. From there the signal could then be relayed to Seven Passes, and from there the new computers could be connected.

This was done with more sponsored equipment, and soon Seven Passes was sailing on the digital stream to the future. A good deed had now been played forward twice.

But this is not where it ended.

A few days later, it was determined that the wife of a local farm manager had found an opportunity to do accounting work for a local dairy. The problem was that she would have to work from home, and she had no connectivity. Chances of obtaining connectivity at this particular site looked exceedingly bad. But then someone remembered the new repeater at Touwsranten school.

A signal test quickly revealed that the Touwsranten repeater could reach the farm manager's house. A commercial company then sponsored the farm manager's installation, and in so doing, played it forward a third time.

This meant that a housewife with limited income was now empowered to run her own little accounting business from home. In a region that is particularly burdened with high unemployment, this seemed like a very welcome opportunity indeed.

In the process it also benefited the dairy. It found itself in a position to get an affordable accountancy service close to its offices, which was also a way for them to make a contribution to local job creation. Yet, there was still one more surprise waiting. A few days after the final installation had been made, it became apparent that the dairy in question also happened to be one of the valued supporters of the Seven Passes Initiative.

And so the kind support of a local agri business, played itself forward in a full circle to return some benefit to the originator.

In a perfect world, it seems that playing forward goodness would always be a boomerang effect that would return positive results to the benefactor. This does not always happen, but when it does, these are the kind of events that make all the hard work that goes into Digital Village seem so much more worthwhile.

As it turned out, a multitude of people received benefit from this one project - and the effect is still continuing to expand. Digital Village has since entered into a memorandum of understand with the Seven Passes Initiative and will continue to work their new partners to play it forward as far as the ripples can possibly go.

Playing it forward is one of the most satisfying endeavours of life. All it takes, is a little work and a lot of will.