| DGMT Learning Lunch Podcast

Have you heard of a brown-bag-lunch? A brown-bag-lunch is an informal meeting or learning opportunity in the workplace during the lunch hour. It is hosted once a month or every two weeks, and it is called a “brown-bag-lunch” because staff bring their lunches along and have them during the session.

Many non-profit organisations (NPOs) have tried to host a regular brown-bag-lunch series, but while this is always valued, for various reasons it rarely ends up being a sustained practice. The Learning Lunch is a podcast and reflection tool that seeks to help solve the problem of having a sustainable brown-bag-lunch series for NPOs.

The Learning Lunch features three types of episodes: Deep Dives; Nourish & Flourish; and Best Bites. Click on the tabs above to read more about them and to select a podcast that you would like to listen to from the category.

Each podcast/learning lunch session is structured as follows:

a 30-minute podcast

instruction for a ±30-minute group reflection

Click on the ‘How to host’ tab for some guidelines on how to use the Learning Lunch podcast as a ‘brown-bag-lunch’ event at your NPO.

Our podcast presenters are Thuthula Mngenela, an experienced radio presenter and content producer who is passionate about assisting people to transform and evolve on their life journey while finding hope in all situations. We guarantee that she will cook up a good dish!

Hlumela is a Social Activist and Journalist based in Cape Town, South Africa. She is currently the Campaign Manager for DG Murray Trust. She is passionate about human-centred stories that dismantle single-story narratives and truly represent the realities of South Africans.

Click on the ‘How to host’ tab for some guidelines on how to use the Learning Lunch podcast as a ‘brown-bag-lunch’ event at your NPO.

Tell us what you would like to see on the menu

To ensure that we are addressing topics that are helpful to NPOs, we would like to invite you to recommend topics, send questions and nominate speakers for The Learning Lunch.

Complete our topic request form

Deep Dive

The Deep Dive explores a specific topic in-depth and from different perspectives. These topics might often relate to current affairs or pertinent issues impacting the work of NGOs in South Africa.

Nourish & Flourish

Nourish & Flourish explores new ways of doing things as NGOs; it reflects on challenges specific to the sector; or provides inspiration – filling up our tanks – not just as staff, but as people.

Best Bites

Sharing the Best Bites profiles the work of a specific NGO around a topic, allowing a larger NGO audience to learn from their approach and to access the lessons they learned along the way. In doing so, we grow networks and develop best practices as a sector.

Episodes On the Menu

LEADERSHIP LESSONS FROM THE ARCH

Amidst trials both past and present for civil society, this podcast looks to give hope. In contrast to hope, despair is an immobilising emotion – and change becomes impossible – leading to hopelessness becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. Looking at the leadership values of the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and those who worked closely with him in civil society, we find out how he kept individuals and organisations that he worked with hopeful.

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Exceptional story telling with Embrace

Storytelling can be used in the non-profit sector as a means of listening and sharing, gaining trust within your network and shaping how you move forward with your work. In this podcast, Embrace Movement for Mothers shares their unique best practices when it comes to storytelling and making the mother a powerful ally in their activism – not only in relation to the child but as a key player socially, economically and politically in South Africa.

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SYSTEMS THINKING FOR SOCIAL INNOVATION

Creating a more equal society may require innovation and entrepreneurship to identify new ways of addressing social and environmental problems. we share the most helpful lessons on systems thinking for social innovation from the Bertha Centre for Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Issues of community development, justice, education, environmental protection, and sustainability are reframed so that new solutions can be considered.

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Theory-U: Create the Future

As civil society, we see ourselves as drivers of change. But, sometimes we can get so bogged down in the day-to-day humdrum of our work, that we lose our energy and drive to explore new terrain – to find new ways of doing things. We also sometimes lose sight of the inner progression that is […]

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Keeping Young people afloat

Many NGOs work with children and young people – and mostly with children and young people that grow up in exceptionally difficult circumstances. Poverty and inequality often form the backdrop to a difficult and painful childhood marred by toxic environments of violence and abuse that leave children and young people traumatised. Waves for Change is […]

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Harnessing Thunder

Where lies our hope at the moment? The last two years have been challenging for civil society. The Covid-19 pandemic heightened the inequalities of South Africa and NPOs, as always, stepped in to offer a helping hand on the ground amidst a series of corruption reports and violent eruptions in KwaZulu-Natal. Individuals came together to do […]

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Congratulations for being chosen or for volunteering to organise your NPOs brown-bag-bag-lunch session with The Learning Lunch! We hope that your efforts will be appreciated by your team!

Tell your colleagues about The Learning Lunch. Together with the appropriate managers decide on a day for the lunch – Fridays have traditionally been a good day for brown-bag-lunch sessions.

Decide on the date for you brown-bag-lunch session and send out meeting invites – you will need to book an hour for the session. You also need to decide which podcast session you will use at your session. You will see that each podcast has an advert that you can download to attach to your invite email.

If you are hosting the session at your office, ensure that you have a space booked where you can sit together, eat lunch and listen to the podcast. You will need a stable internet connection (if you have not downloaded the podcast) and good speakers. Make sure that you have downloaded and printed the ‘Takeaways’ reflection points which you should read to everyone again after the podcast. Discuss. If you are hosting online, this guide to host Zoom sessions might be handy.

That's it! Enjoy your meal!