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.
Our mission:
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:
Are they African led?
Do they meet a critical need?
Are they effective in what they do?
Do a large proportion of donations result in direct benefits to those being served?
Are the staff and those they serve justly treated?
Are they financially accountable?
Are they accessible for international communications?
Are they interested in a relationship with others beyond donations?
Do they have a good reputation in their community?
We advise some organizations that show promise and want to partner but are not quite ready. Our Kenyan counterpart gives them guidance on achieving goals such as financial accounting and transparency.
We select those organizations that meet our criteria.
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.
Do you have a skill or some other resource that meets the need of an African
organization? We can help you find out. Take a look at the organization
descriptions on the Support
part of our site, or contact
us for more information
