Funding Application Forms and Reporting Guidelines: Grantee Reporting Requirements (59 KB PDF) Apply Online to the OSF-SA		News Flashes The Open Society Monitoring Index (OSMI) To read the address by Dr Mamphela Ramphele given at the launch of the Open Society Monitoring Index on 12 August click here. To read the address by Dr Max Price given at the launch of the Open Society Monitoring Index on 12 August click here. The Open Society Monitoring Index Round 1 is now available. To view the document please see featured articles below. Deadline for submission of funding proposals for the OSF-SA November 2010 board meetings OSF-SA is now accepting proposals for its November 2010 funding round.  The cut off date for the submission of applications is 17 September 2010. Applicants will be informed of the outcome of their application after the board meeting on 20 November 2010. Please note that OSF-SA will not be holding a board meeting in September 2010. Applicants who were intending to submit proposals for consideration at this meeting are asked to submit them to the November 2010 meeting instead. Two new Criminal Justice Initiative publications are now available entitled: “Offender reintegration in South Africa - a Complementary Crime Prevention Measure” and “An acceptable price to pay? The use of lethal force by the police in South Africa”. Please see Featured Publications below for the links. The OSF-SA Annual Report 2008/2009 is now available To view the document please click the following link: OSF Annual Report 2008-9

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 Foundation for 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		Open Society Monitoring Index Round 1 (528 KB)   The Open Society Monitoring Index assesses the degree of openness in South African society.   Published Date: 2010     CJI Occasional Paper 8: An Acceptable price to Pay The use of lethal force by police in South Africa (591 KB)   Author: David Bruce   Published Date: 2010     CJI Occasional Paper 7: Offender Reintegration in South Africa (159 KB)   Author: Chesné Albertus   Published Date: 2010     OSF SA Section 49 Workshop Report (176 KB)   Report on the OSF-SA roundtable discussion on the human rights and practical implications of the proposed amendments to Section 49 of The Criminal Procedure Act   Published Date: 2010     Public Broadcasting in Africa Series: South Africa (1.54 MB)     Published Date: 2010     CJI Occasional Paper 6 - Ten Years of the South African Prevention of Organised Crime Act (1999-2009) (55KB)   Author: Jamil Ddamulira Mujuzi   Published Date: 2010     Contemporary Issues In South Africa Toolkit (182 KB)   Author: Tanya Farber   Published Date: 2009

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 Foundation 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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