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Young Women Writers Program (Blog: Simulizi)
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We have also begun the second edition of our Young Women Writers Program, the first of which ran in May 2020. The second cohort is currently in its third week of a six-week writing program that aims to enhance the skills of enthusiastic young women who aspire to be writers. This program is a part of the larger goal supported by the African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF) to foster Women and Philanthropy within the continent. It is our hope that this group of women (as have the ones from the previously ran program in May) will feel encouraged to produce knowledge and have their writing published on the APN blog: Simulizi, as well as many other outlets that host African stories of generosity. Some of the articles that have come from the program so far can be found here.
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COVID-19 Reveals Local Resourcing Capacity as Civil Society’s Weakest Link in Africa by Charles Kojo Vandyck.
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Local Resourcing is a recurrent challenge for civil society actors in Africa. The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that now more than ever, it is imperative that civil society mobilises local resources and adopts indigenous philanthropic and sustainability models to be more robust, resilient and gain the autonomy it deserves to challenge the prevailing difficulties that the coronavirus presents.
Local resourcing is a troubling challenge for CSOs in Africa. CSOs in the continent are increasingly being challenged to mobilise funding from their immediate constituencies as a more sustainable option for responding to socio-economic problems. In Africa, this situation is made more complex by a general deficit in innovation and creativity with respect to the design of proposals and application of local resourcing techniques.
WACSI, Change the Game Academy and Africa Philanthropy Network interventions on the continent has revealed that there is an overdependence on external donor funding sources and a lack of appreciation of potential resources from local communities. In addition, civil society actors in the continent have inadequate knowledge of tools that could be utilised to raise resources from local sources.
Meanwhile, CSOs continue to have difficulties articulating their vision, ideas and plans in proposals. Many of them fail to identify and engage the available donors in their communities. several CSOs acknowledge that they lack human resources with strong writing and engagement skills that will enable them to attract the requisite funding from local sources including the private sector and individual donors.
Other challenges include weak conceptualisation, ineffective presentation of ideas, the lack of work plans and detailed budgets, absence of compliance documents and a shortage of professionally trained and experienced fundraisers with local context capabilities.
Therefore, local resourcing for most CSOs is particularly difficult for several reasons including; excessive competition among numerous groups for scarce local financial resources, poorly regulated operating space for CSOs, difficulty for CSOs in establishing credible references, practical issues with resource transfers, numerous tax issues and the lack of diversified resourcing strategies. In addition, private sector players and citizens living in the diaspora continue to argue that most CSOs lack the ability to “sell” their causes through a compelling value proposition.
The coronavirus pandemic has amplified the urgent need to strengthen the financial sustainability of actors within the civil society ecosystem in Africa within the context of a changing external donor environment.
In response to these challenges, WACSI, Change the Academy and the Africa Philanthropy Network through a series of covid-19 related resource support including technology capacity strengthening and reflection sessions are responding to this essential need within this current pandemic and the post c0vid19 context. Specifically, WACSI has strengthened its resource mobilisation intervention to integrate issues of operational sustainability and local resourcing strategies. The Institute is also actively pursuing non-traditional partnerships with intergovernmental agencies and other non-state actors that would enable it to further this cause and respond appropriately to the skills and knowledge capacity gap.
Key resource mobilisation issues that need to be addressed in order to ensure the civil society ecosystem thrives include strengthening the capacity of civil society to develop holistic offline and online resourcing strategies; strengthening the capacity for mobilising resources from various sources; identifying potential sources for financial support; helping organisations to increase the portfolio of potential domestic and international donors.
In the coming months, all three parties are poised to strengthen their partnership to provide more technical support to organisations to prepare for virtual and remote communication and meetings with donors and identify internal organisational resourcing strengths and build on them.
The thrust of this partnership is to actively promote local giving for self-reliance. The strategy is to harness long-term viability within African communities and to work with communities to build their confidence in taking charge of their development agenda.
[Guest entry by Charles Kojo Vandyck, WACSI’s Head Capacity Development Unit]
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Visit the APN website to stay up to date with our events and activities.
The Community Immunity campaign is still ongoing. If you would like to donate, partner or learn more, visit the website here as well as Twitter: @cmunityimmunity; Instagram: communityimmunityafrica; and Facebook: Community Immunity Africa
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