• Africans working at the grassroots carry the best answers to the challenges that face their countries.
  
• Westerners want to see Africa thrive.
• The best way is to foster what the Africans are doing effectively.

Building relationships with effective, grassroots African organizations

What we do: We identify grassroots African organizations that meet high standards of integrity and effectiveness. These are the steps we take:

We seek a variety of organizations that respond to a variety of challenges, including poverty, health, governmental integrity, protecting the environment, and ethnic reconciliation.

We learn of organizations through word of mouth and reputation. We ask people we know and trust (including some in relief and development agencies) about effective grassroots organizations.

We visit organizations that look promising. We retain a Kenyan in Nairobi who travels throughout eastern Africa to assess whether the organizations identified meet our criteria, which include:

1. Are they African led?
2. Do they meet a critical need?
3. Are they effective in what they do?
4. Do a large proportion of donations result in direct benefits to those being served?
5. Are the staff and those they serve justly treated? Are they financially accountable?
6. Are they accessible for international communications?
7. Are they interested in a relationship with others beyond donations?
8. Do they have a good reputation in their community?

We encourage their work by extending their networks. We connect them with other individuals and organizations known to us (a list that we are constantly enlarging). And we foster exchanges within the network. Sometimes the needs of an African organization are best met by another African organization; sometimes by a person or organization outside of Africa.