An isiZulu Word meaning 'we can do things for ourselves'.
Singazenzela is not another website – but a set of interactive services that empower vulnerable children and young people to initiate and access relevant life services – whatever they need, however they need it!
Singazenzela is not an on-line fantasy game - but a visual metaphor that uses a gaming approach to help children and young people to grasp how to make best use of what is out there - in ways that will enhance their security, health, education and well-being! Everything is blended together so that whatever media is available to a child can be used to make something happen.
The metaphor includes a digital key to their own virtual dwelling and their own private secure store. Wrapped around those private things is a understandable social environment - the buildings, the street and the neighbourhood.
Singazenzela enables these to be blended together as a hybrid construct bringing together into one virtual space the various fragments of a life spread across disconnected physical space - absent parents, rural grandparents, distant friends, next door neighbours, remote officialdom etc.
For much of the time target children may not be able to get on-line to any form of media rich material. So, there will be ways of offering them their own off line device that will work wherever a TV can be found. It will be a 'life events and key tasks' flight simulator style experience. Using it will be a rehearsal and preparation for the fleeting and transient moments when a child can get some form of affordable connectivity.
And, the Singazenzela metaphor is strong enough to allow them to mix and match public networks and appliances in a way that works for them e.g. use cell phone to pick up alerts set up using a computer in a digital doorway etc.
Ideally Singazenzela should help children & young people to work out how to engage better with their physical reality, extend their horizons and, initiate and manage a whole range of untested relationships with public sector delivery agencies and supportive NGOs.