Archaeology of a Language Development Ngo : Excavating Organisational Identity

NGOs that provide alternative education and literacy development in response to discriminatory education systems are known for their contextually responsive interventions to counter the effects of structural inequities. This book documents the institutional memory of a South African NGO,the Environment and Language Education Trust (ELET),portraying two decades of its history through the eyes of key individuals. It traces the multiple internal and extraneous influences that shaped the NGO's mutating identity as it negotiated the challenges of an unpredictable NGO climate and volatile political regime. The book interrogates the potential of an instititutional biography as an alternative evaluative tool,finding that while ELET has been complicit in allowing its mission as a counter- hegemonic agency to be undermined by its submission to normative, coercive and mimetic isomorphism, it nevertheless demonstrates agency to innovate rather than replicate,benefitting from astute management and a vigilant quest for home-grown intervention programmes which helps it redefine what constitutes emancipatory literacies in a developing country.