The TELP Resource Center. One of the salient features of UNCF’s project design is the TELP Resource Center, a clearinghouse for TELP services and activities. The Center is a transparent delivery system for implementing a project that serves 15 institutions with different capacities and levels of need, scattered across the landscape of South Africa. It enables UNCF to provide technical assistance and information to the HDIs in a timely manner and facilitates easy access to TELP resources by HDI staff and students. The Center houses a repository for documenting TELP activities and storing electronic and print data on higher education and USAID policies and procedures; it is also a gateway to the Internet. Its staff will coordinate TELP training activities, conferences, seminars, and workshops; deploy short-term consultants; facilitate the work of proposal review panels; and provide written feedback and evaluation data to stakeholders. The Center’s staff will also enable UNCF to keep stakeholders informed through the quarterly publication of an on-line TELP Newsletter and the publication of products developed under the TELP contract. It is anticipated that the Center will become a valuable legacy for institutional research, documentation, and communications.

  Gender Sensitivity

  Research Capacity

  Outreach to the
  Corporate
  Community

Gender Sensitivity. The project’s design includes a gender pipeline initiative for HDI staff which consists of five activities: 1) a national study on gender equity in higher education; 2) a gender seminar series focusing on gender analysis, gender policies, gender research, and gender studies; 3) support for seminar participants to draft gender policies and procedures at the HDIs; 4) annual gender sensitivity workshops on all HDI campuses; and 5) an administrative mentoring program for women at each HDI.

Research Capacity. UNCF is committed to contributing to the development of a research culture at the HDIs. The research initiatives described below will be integrated into TELP’s four activity components: 1) research training through two product-oriented national workshops; 2) staff research internships with research institutes and private sector entities in South Africa; 3) student research internships tied to staff internships; 4) linkage research on best practices from U.S.-HDI linkage grants; and 5) policy research for staff in conjunction with the investigative studies described in component four.

Outreach to the Corporate Community. Building on UNCF’s history of successful partnerships with the private sector in the United States, we plan to assist in the development of partnerships between the HDIs and the corporate community in South Africa, and to work with the HDIs to develop ways of leveraging funding and employment opportunities for HDI students and staff.

UNCF has created a TELP Corporate Advisory Board comprised of representatives from Procter & Gamble, Warner Lambert, Electronic Data Systems, General Motors, Coca Cola, the Mott Foundation, and the Carnegie Foundation, most of whom have a presence in South Africa. We will collaborate with this board to support HDI projects and to promote corporate philanthropy in South Africa.