This is the second of a series of blogs linked to the ‘Let’s build peace: here and now’ conversations being organised by the Foundations for Peace (FFP) Network. Through these conversations, the FFP Network and their partners are creating a space to share the stories of peacebuilders who have been closest to the ground. The so-called Good…
We are living in a time of unprecedented challenge – the pandemic, political polarisation, growing tribalism and nationalism, long delayed racial reckoning in parts of the world, exacerbation of gender inequities, rising poverty, gaping inequality, and the imminent climate catastrophe. As agents of change, there is much frustration that our efforts are falling short, so…
In this interview Graciela Hopstein of the Brazilian Philanthropy Network for Social Justice speaks with GIFE – Group of Institutes, Foundations and Enterprises, Brazil about the role and centrality of social movements in bringing about systemic transformations to create the world we seek. She reflects on the challenges social movements and the civic space face…
Resilience has been the word on everyone’s lips over the last year. We’ve probably all felt our resilience tested or reaffirmed in different ways. For those of us who have been directly responding to the impacts of the pandemic on people and planet, resilience has been a helpful concept to frame the individual and collective…
Sometime during a recent PEXForum conference, I wrote on my notepad that resilience has become the development sector’s new buzzword. Others have made the same discovery. PSJP’s new paper, Building Resilience in International Development lists a raft of references to the term in the later literature of development and it seems that multilateral organisations, foundations,…
This blog post is prompted by the provocative article entitled Institutional Philanthropy and Popular Organising in Africa: Some Initial Reflections from Social Movement Activists by Halima Mohamed which draws on the experiences of activists from 13 different movements across Africa. I am part of one of those movements. Social movements are proof of ordinary people’s…
“What’s on your secret excel spreadsheet?” This was the question posed to a room of Brazilian civil society practitioners, who had been convened by Candid in 2019 to discuss the topic of measurement in their work. Over 2018 and 2019, the GFCF had similarly coordinated a separate learning group of 15 community philanthropy partners to explore the…
If you look at Tewa’s website, it will tell you that the word means support in Nepali. Applied to the organization, it’s both appropriate and understated. Tewa’s story has been ably told. This is not the place to retell it. Instead, I want to draw attention to a few key ideas which inform it and…
It’s an old adage: who pays the piper, calls the tune. In other words, if it’s your money, you get to choose. In general, it might be a good rule, but there are times when it’s worth reconsidering. Towards the end of last year, PSJP published a paper based on conversations with 14 civil society…
By Andrew Milner and Halima Mahomed ‘Development can be seen as expanding the real freedoms that people enjoy,’ wrote Amartya Sen. However, it seldom has. Instead, development has been reduced to much more easily identifiable numbers and targets. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Africa. Institutional philanthropy, which could potentially play a significant part…