What We're Learning

We are continually learning from our partners in Africa. We maintain frequent contact with their programme staff, and encourage each organization to share their challenges as well as their successes with us, so that we can better support their work. We strive to facilitate opportunities for discussion, foster the creation of networks and ensure that meaningful exchanges can take place between and amongst the organizations we fund.

To date, we have facilitated a number of roundtables and partnerships at the community level, bringing together representatives from dozens of organizations to share their innovative approaches on topics ranging from orphan care to home-based care, mentorship to documentation. We have recently launched Grassroots Exchange, a website specifically geared toward the organizations we fund, so that they can share materials and resources, discuss their challenges and build networks within and across countries.

We are also supporting the creation, by frontline activists, of the African Institute on Gender-Based Violence, HIV/AIDS and Counselling (AIR). The fledgling Institute is unlike anything else that exists on the continent: imagine a dynamic, mobile, expert response team of women, ready to assist other women and organizations throughout Africa, armed with expertise in counselling and trained to assist frontline workers, counsellors, nurses and doctors. The Institute will also serve as a much-needed forum for advocates to come together to exchange new ideas, approaches and lessons learned around sexual violence and AIDS.