News Flashes Funding Application Deadlines The deadline for submission of funding proposals for the March 2009 board meeting is 2 February 2009. Applicants will be informed of the decision regarding their application after the OSF-SA board meeting on 28 March 2009. Call for proposals: Capacity building in Nompumelelo  OSF-SA is inviting organisations and individuals to submit proposals to undertake capacity building in Nompumelelo in the Eastern Cape. The closing date for applications is 28 November 2008. For more information please follow the link to Positions/Opportunities.

The OSF-SA is committed to promoting the values, institutions and practices of an open, non-racial and non-sexist, democratic, civil society. It works for a vigorous and autonomous civil society in which the rule of law and divergent opinions are respected.

The Open Society in South Africa is a grant-making organisation, and is a member of the International Soros Foundations Network.

OSF-SA Programmes		Featured Publications
Economic Development and Justice Criminal Justice Initiative Human Rights and Governance Programme Media Programme		Research on the Sentencing Framework Bill (408 KB)   Author: Stephan Terblanche   Published Date: 2008     Between A Rock And A Hard Place - Bail decisions in three South African courts (576 KB)   Author: Vanja Karth   Published Date: 2008     Community Courts Across the Globe - A Survey of Goals, Performance (584 KB)   Author: Diana L. Karafin   Published Date: Jan 2008     PAIA Manual (10,515KB)   PAIA Manual   Published Date: Dec 2007     Meeting their Mandates (1628kB)   Meeting their Mandates   Published Date: Dec 2007     AfriMAP: Effective Public Service Delivery   AfriMAP: Effective Public Service Delivery   Published Date: 2007

The Foundation’s strategy is to support and engage in activities that focus on the delivery of a needed service. In doing so it has decided it will:

• act in a limited number of priority areas and with projects which will initiate change and produce demonstrable results within two years
• seek major ventures or fresh ideas that would not see the light of day without the resources and assistance of the Foundation
• seek to act in co-ordination and co-operation with other organisations and funding agencies to ensure that resources are optimally used

The Foundation will seek to ensure that in its work all projects should have:

• an ongoing institution-building impact
• an emphasis on sustainability
• a mutually reinforcing impact wherever possible

The Open Society Foundation was founded by George Soros in April 1993 to promote the ideal of an open society in South Africa; an ideal which includes democracy, a market economy, a strong civil society, respect for minorities and tolerance for divergent opinions.

The foundation has been established in the conviction that the collapse of a closed, apartheid society will not lead automatically to the emergence of an open society in South Africa. In its work the foundation will encourage new approaches and ideas which will contribute to the creating of an open society in South Africa.

Founder and Chairman

George Soros was born in Budapest, Hungary on August 12, 1930. He survived the Nazi occupation of Budapest and left communist Hungary in 1947 for England, where he graduated from the London School of Economics (LSE). While a student at LSE, Soros became familiar with the work of the philosopher Karl Popper, who had a profound influence on his thinking and later on his professional and philanthropic activities.

The Financier

In 1956, Soros moved to the United States, where he began to accumulate a large fortune through an international investment fund he founded and managed. Today he is chairman of Soros Fund Management LLC.

The Philanthropist

Soros has been active as a philanthropist since 1979, when he began providing funds to help black students attend the University of Cape Town in apartheid South Africa. Today he is chairman of the Open Society Institute (OSI) and the founder of a network of philanthropic organizations that are active in more than 50 countries. Based primarily in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union—but also in Africa, Latin America, Asia, and the United States—these foundations are dedicated to building and maintaining the infrastructure and institutions of an open society. They work closely with OSI to develop and implement a range of programs focusing on civil society, education, media, public health, and human rights as well as social, legal, and economic reform. In recent years, OSI and the Soros foundations network have spent more than $400 million annually to support projects in these and other focus areas. In 1992, Soros founded Central European University, with its primary campus in Budapest.

The Author and Philosopher

Soros is the author of eight books:

• The Bubble of America Supremacy: Correcting the Misuse of American Power (PublicAffairs, January 2004)
• George Soros on Globalization (2002)
• The Alchemy of Finance (1987)
• Opening the Soviet System (1990)
• Underwriting Democracy (1991)
• Soros on Soros: Staying Ahead of the Curve (1995)
• The Crisis of Global Capitalism: Open Society Endangered (1998)
• Open Society: Reforming Global Capitalism (2000)

His articles and essays on politics, society, and economics regularly appear in major newspapers and magazines around the world.

George Soros's political activities are wholly separate from the Open Society Institute and the Soros foundations network, including the Open Society Fund for South Africa.

Read an official OSI statement on this subject.

The numerous non-profit foundations and organisations created and funded by George Soros are linked together in an informal network, the Soros foundations network. At the heart of this network are 24 autonomous national foundations. They are located in Albania, Belarus, Bulgaria, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Georgia, Haiti, Hungary, Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Ukraine and Yugoslavia.

The foundations share the common mission of supporting the development of open societies. To this end, they support a range of programmes and initiatives in education, civil society, independent media, Internet and e-mail communications, publishing, human rights and social, legal, and economic reform. The Open Society Institute - New York and the Open Society Institute - Budapest assist these foundations and organisations by creating programmes on issues common to two or more foundations and by providing administrative, financial, and technical support. Other entities created by George Soros include the Central European University, the International Science Foundation, and the Open Media Research Institute.

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