Khulisa Social Solutions

Khulisa Social Solutions was established in 1997 — the same year South Africa's first full democratic parliament was finding its feet. The word "khulisa" means "to grow" or "to nurture" in Nguni languages, and that orientation has defined the organisation's approach across nearly three decades: patient, consistent, community-embedded work rather than short-term project cycles.

Today Khulisa operates from 24 offices across South Africa, supporting over 100,000 people each year through a network of ±180 staff members and 350+ NGO and CBO partners. Their work spans eight interconnected programme areas — all grounded in the recognition that social challenges like GBV, crime, youth vulnerability, and community breakdown are deeply interconnected and cannot be addressed in isolation.

What They Do and Why It Matters for GBV Survivors

Peacemaking and Restorative Justice Programmes Khulisa's peacemaking and justice work creates structured space for dialogue, mediation, and restorative approaches to harm and conflict — with direct application for communities in which GBV has fractured trust, disrupted families, and created cycles of violence. Restorative justice approaches are particularly valuable when survivors are navigating not just legal processes but the complex relational aftermath of intimate partner or family violence.

Community Development — Strengthening Local Leadership By strengthening local leaders, informal networks, and community relationships, Khulisa addresses the social conditions that enable GBV — including poverty, social isolation, and the absence of community accountability. Work in Northern Cape mining communities (Danielskuil and Postmasburg/Tsantsabane) is integrating technology-enabled ecosystem stabilisation as a model for prevention-led community development at scale.

Early Childhood Development — Safe, Nurturing Foundations Safe early learning environments are not only developmental necessities; they are preventive GBV interventions. Children who experience safe, consistent care in their earliest years are less likely to perpetuate or accept violence in later relationships. Khulisa's ECD work lays groundwork that is both immediately protective and intergenerationally preventive.

School Programmes — Strengthening Learners, Educators, and Families Khulisa works within school communities — with learners, teachers, and families — to build the social and emotional competencies that underpin healthy relationships, bystander capacity, and help-seeking behaviour.

Youth and Adult Personal Development Structured personal development programmes support young people and adults in building confidence, skills, and pathways to sustainable livelihoods — addressing the economic vulnerability that both traps survivors in abusive relationships and drives perpetration of violence.

Offender Rehabilitation and Reintegration Khulisa's offender rehabilitation programmes support accountability, behaviour change, and reintegration into community life — addressing GBV at the source of perpetration as well as the point of survivor support.

NGO and CBO Strengthening Khulisa directly strengthens the capacity of other organisations — providing governance support, systems development, and sustainability assistance to CBOs. For a survivor-facing website, this matters: many of the smaller organisations serving survivors directly may be Khulisa-strengthened, and referring to Khulisa as a capacity-builder for the ecosystem of which your site is a part is accurate.

Khulisa Social Solutions: 105 Oxford Road, Saxonwold, Johannesburg. Tel: (011) 788 8237. Email: info@khulisa.org.za. 24 offices nationwide.