Seriti Institute connects partners for lasting community change

In South Africa, too many development projects end when funding ends. Communities are left without the systems needed to sustain jobs, food production, or livelihoods. Seriti Institute exists to change that.

Established in 2009, Seriti is a development facilitation agency that connects communities, businesses, and government to build systems that endure beyond individual projects. Rather than delivering stand-alone interventions, Seriti realigns partners around shared outcomes – turning short-term initiatives into sustainable livelihoods.

Its interconnected programmes span food security, climate resilience, enterprise development, youth pathways, and early childhood support. Together, they form one integrated system designed to stabilise households, protect livelihoods, and create long-term income and ownership.

As CEO, Juanita Pardesi explains, Seriti’s role is not to replace partners but to enable them to work better together — so impact does not fade when projects end.

Programmes driving change

Seriti’s initiatives deliver impact through proven partnerships, such as:

Agri-node: Supports more than 300 smallholder producers across multiple sites through shared infrastructure used by cooperatives and informal enterprises. By linking producers to private-sector markets, the agri-node model shifts food production from one-off harvests to a reliable, ongoing income stream.
Social Employment Fund: Coordinates national government, local partners, the private sector, and communities across four rounds to create over 13 800 work opportunities nationwide, primarily in food security, greening, and environmental services.
Work. Learn. Grow: Since 2019, it has rallied communities, government, and the private sector via agri-nodes to support 729 smallholder farmers, bring 665 hectares into production, and serve over 365 peri-urban, urban, and rural communities.
Are Bapaleng: Builds foundations for the next generation through a parent and caregiver programme and through the National Youth Service, we create an employment pathway for young people in ECD.
GreenWorks: Promotes community-led climate action. We equip communities with the knowledge, resources, and support to lead transformative climate solutions, including creating awareness on the Just Energy Transition (JET), enabling informed decision-making that strengthens livelihoods and builds a sustainable, resilient futures.
Hluma Roots: A social enterprise that creates market access for small-scale producers, reducing individual risk by strengthening the enterprise ecosystem through market linkages.

Building beyond funding

When programme funding ends, emerging enterprises often face the same structural barriers that kept them excluded in the first place – limited access to markets, working capital, inputs, infrastructure, and business support.

Seriti addresses these constraints by building shared systems rather than isolated solutions. Through multifunctional agri-nodes, aggregation models, and private-sector market linkages, small-scale producers and enterprises are supported in moving from one-off activities to consistent income.

This approach allows Seriti to balance national scale with local leadership, ensuring that programmes remain responsive to lived realities while contributing to broader systems change.

“Our aim is simple,” Pardesi says. “Communities that thrive without depending on us, because the systems around them work.”

Looking ahead, Seriti Institute’s journey is focused on depth of impact rather than scale alone. The focus is on strengthening sustainable livelihood pathways, expanding climate-smart food systems, and supporting young people as they transition from social employment into long-term economic participation.

“At the same time, we are reinforcing our organisational sustainability through strong governance, diversified funding, and long-term strategic partnerships.”