The Grail is a community of women, rooted in Christian faith, strengthening and supporting one another in their search for God.  We encourage each other to be open to the Spirit and to work towards transforming our world into a place of justice, peace and love.  The Grail has existed for 76 years and is working in 18 countries.  The spirit of the Grail is expressed in practical work towards our international goals:

• working for justice and solidarity

• building bridges of understanding and breaking down barriers

• facing cultural changes

• healing our planet and the divisions among us

• enabling women to co-operate and support one another in their spiritual search, and their efforts to develop their full potential in different walks of life.

Background to the work of the Grail Social Development 
Training Centre
The Grail has been a training institution throughout its 80 year history. We are an international, ecumenical women’s movement indigenous in 18 different countries. The work of the Grail in Brazil , Mexico , Kenya , Uganda , Tanzania , Nigeria , Zimbabwe , Mozambique , South Africa , the Philippines , Papua New Guinea and India is focused on different forms of development and transformative processes.  The Grail Social Development Centre has hosted eight International Development Programmes in Kleinmond with participants from over 32 countries in the past seven years. These programmes have highlighted the need for a new layer of leadership using and developing further transformative development approaches in South Africa .
The International Grail movement has a long history of effective development work both in South Africa and in 20 other countries.  Much of this work is based on our Training for Transformation approach, and the subsequent spin off work in economics, through workshops on civil rights and responsibilities.

Our approach to community development  

Transformative development approach. An approach to transformative community development was developed in Kenya in the 1970’s and has continued to expand and deepen until the present. Six different areas of study contributed to the effectiveness of this methodology:

• understanding the deep psychological blocks in people who have been traumatized by poverty (as understood by Fanon and many others) which hinders the building of trust among people with different interests

• the development of critical consciousness and creativity in people, enabling them to ‘read their reality and write their own history’.  This approach was initially developed by Paulo Freire in Brazil

• the deepening of social-economic analysis through organizations of civil society to overcome the fear that they were unable to understand the functioning of society at different levels

• participatory methodologies in basic adult education developed by Freire, Knowles, Benne, and other practitioners based on group leadership skills and understanding of group dynamics

• forms of organisational development that encourage creativity and responsibility

• the link between culture and spirituality that encourages and enhances deep long-term commitment towards justice

Creativity, sound theory, practical skills and generous commitment are the backbone of community development.  There are many resource people scattered throughout the world who have demonstrated effective community development programmes.  As the approach to training is eclectic and grows out of the needs of a particular historic, cultural and national context, there is obviously no ‘one place’ a person can go to ‘study’ the methodology, nor comprehensive theory and best practices.

Grail Programmes 

The Grail Social Development Centre has hosted eight International Development Programmes in Kleinmond with participants from over 32 countries in the past seven years. These programmes have highlighted the need for a new layer of leadership using and developing further transformative development approaches in South Africa .
The International Grail movement has a long history of effective development work both in South Africa and in 20 other countries.  It does not do ‘development dumps’ -- or jet in and out of communities with workshops. It has staying power and acts as a bridge between communities and local government officials. Much of this work is based on our Training for Transformation approach, and the subsequent spin off work in economics, through workshops on civil rights and responsibilities.

The Grail Social Development Training Centre  

The Grail Social Development Training Centre was established in Kleinmond in 1999.  Our work in the past seven years has been with emerging leadership in marginalised communities, and since 2003, mostly in the Overstrand municipality.  Since 2003, we have engaged with all of the populations within Kleinmond aiming to build social cohesion between the population groups.  This has been mainly through leadership training and setting up Housing and Savings Associations. The Grail Social Development Training Centre is uniquely placed to deliver strong developmental leadership and learnership programmes with formerly disadvantaged communities.  

The Grail provides:

• support to hold community teams accountable at all levels
• leadership training with community leaders who can do the work
• structures for teams that build commitment to the common good
• professional staff to work with local teams enabling them to gain confidence and take initiative
•         internationally recognised training programmes that bring alternative approaches to development. These have been tested and proved, while the dominant model has been unable to alleviate poverty
• a global network which gives added power, insights, human and intellectual resources.

The Grail Social Development Centre implemented a three-phased training programme (2000-2001) for a total of six weeks (spread over 14 months) for 36 women from Mozambique , South Africa , Zimbabwe , Kenya , Tanzania and Uganda . The results encouraged new sustainable projects for overcoming immediate poverty in over 42 communities.  Also each team developed alliances with their own national NGO sector workers on analysis of and actions on various aspects of globalization. 
Between 2002-2004, the Grail Social Development Centre initiated two one-year phased international training programme held at Kleinmond. These courses were for teams of women from 17 different African countries. In 2005, we held nine introductory 7-day workshops with 309 participants in all nine provinces of South Africa .
In 2006, we began a one-year accredited course for 33 South Africans.  This programme will also be held at the Grail Training Centre in 2007 and 2008. 

In summary, the Grail Centre Trust runs four programmes:   

• Community Development Programme - local community development programmes in the Overberg District (with 4 senior staff)
• national Training for Transformation one-year course (with 4 core staff and 4-6 resource people for each module)
• AIDS Response - HIV and AIDS programme based in CapeTown (focused on breaking the stigma in communities through faith-based organisations and a care-for-caregivers programme reaching 65 AIDS organisations) (8 staff)
• The Grail Centre - A training Centre in Kleinmond servicing over 10,000 people annually and reaching over 75 NGOs and CBOs mainly from the Western Cape . (9 staff)
  

to the top