By Simphiwe Mabaso

The JAMLAB accelerator programme is swiftly coming to an end. With Demo Day fast approaching — that day seemed lik it was in the distant future from when we first began. We as GlobalGirl Media South Africa (GGMSA), under the accelerator programme have identified Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) as our potential clients. Through the hypothesis developed from using the Lean Canvas business model, NGO’S have been identified as our early adopters to our services. The GGMSA Bureau services that we aims to offer is content development (Story-telling using creative writing, photography, videography and digital content development using social media techniques).

We started a dialogue with a number of NGOs to test our hypothesis. We needed to verify our assumptions as to whether content development is indeed a need for their organisations. The facts we collated proved our assumptions to be true.

The data collected consisting of their challenges included: time constraints, limited resources, packaging and distribution of content to various channels.

Our pilot was cemented through working and testing our assumption with Action Aid South Africa — “an organisation that aims to help people use their own power to fight poverty and injustice”. The organisation aims to understand the impact of power and what it means to give it to the powerless. This is what makes the world a fair and better place, if this power is used and distributed correctly. This being said, Action Aid South Africa is also about empowering young women because there is much injustice against them.

However, there was a need for Action Aid South Africa to capture events and tell their stories about the work that they do and the impact they have made across the country. This is where the GlobalGirl Media South Africa Bureau got involved and documented their initiatives.

The objective of their event was to create a space where the young women from the Girls Clubs in different schools across the country could gather and talk about issues affecting them. The highlight of the event was the Girls Club Charter which emphasises issues around bullying and sexual violence in schools and how to deal with the perpetrators.

At the conference (GGMSA Bureau) captured these conversations using video, conducted interviews and took the moments of bliss that the girls had during their event.

As a start-up, we felt this conference is in alignment with what we stand for; creating a platform for the GlobalGirls to showcase their skills.

The pilot was successful as we delivered and captured the message as per the client’s brief. They were well pleased with our work ethic and the quality of our services.

Following the Action Aid event, the GGMSA Bureau interns covered an event by the University of the Witwatersrand’s School of Literature, Language and Media Studies with a student doing their PhD Defence.

This is the beginning of GlobalGirl Media Bureau advancing and building a profile that will attract more future corporate and government clients.

With that being being said, GGMSA has worked under the JAMLAB accelerator programme to turn the vision of the bureau into a reality, solidifying our offering and build our database of potential clients.

The weekly check-ins, the Creating the Media classes and monthly board presentations played a key role in building the confidence that we needed in our business model as well as reminding us of the vision.

In conclusion, the bureau is an exciting reality that we are yet to scale up! and our services can only improve as the bureau continues to develop and as our client base grows.

GGMSA looks forward to Demo Day and is excited to launch the media production bureau.

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