The road travelled and the road ahead: A conversation with Tatiana Fraga Diez as Comunalia turns ten
The GFCF checked in with Tatiana to discuss the work of Comunlia.
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A visual journey of shifting power: Dalia Association in Palestine
Background: Dalia believes in achieving holistic development. This means our community development approach focuses on the ecological, local economy, social and cultural dimensions. As a …
The birth of #ShiftThePower
The deliberate use of the hashtag #ShiftThePower was intended to provoke. Frustrations about the shortcomings of philanthropy and development aid are nothing new. However, it has always been very hard – and there have been few incentives – for those on the receiving end of aid to call out the practices and behaviours of funders and other big international players, let alone suggest that the power that they wield might be contributing to the problems that they are meant to be solving. In that sense, a truly global summit could provide a space to start such a conversation: if it was going to work, the elephant in the room – ‘the P-word’ – needed to be named loudly and incontrovertibly from the start.
The winner takes it all
These are real-life situations that are purely hurtful where the Global South organisation encounters three hurtful behavioural patterns – superiority, arrogance and dominance. In these situations, one chooses to either exercise extreme humility or risk not having funding for their organisations. These scenarios might appear normal to some organisations especially in this environment where civil society might be competing for funding or where funding is on the decline
#Vaccines4All: Open letter to EU & UK leaders
While some countries begin to talk about recovery, are starting to resume normal life and are able once again to enjoy social, cultural and sports activities, many others are still struggling with new waves of the pandemic. While that remains the case, we are all at risk of virus mutations. We have already learnt that the virus knows no borders. Why, therefore, would you allow it to mutate freely in some parts of the world and risk those new variants resurfacing in your own countries?
Pathways to effectively operationalize the localization agenda
“We need to go ahead and interrogate the architecture of this localisation agenda; does it appreciate the indigenous development models that have empowered local players? Is there investment, heavy lifting committed, to go against the grain of popularity and promoting homegrown small-scale solutions?”
The localization agenda: How successful is it?
However, donors seem to have failed to recognise and wholly appreciate the crucial place and role of local organisations in delivering direct response actions to victims of humanitarian disasters.
Response: Here’s how we build local
policies. The Giving for Change Alliance continues their important work on community philanthropy with Dutch support: Against a global background of shrinking civic space, Giving for Change will encourage civil society organisations, including and especially human rights organisations, to value and adopt local resource mobilisation as a form of constituency building, and as a way to strengthen their position as legitimate champions and defenders of diverse causes, with strong roots in the communities they serve.
Building local giving is central to shifting power
Getting people to see themselves as having agency and being able to exercise choices by giving – rather than as passive ‘beneficiaries’ – is in itself a form of social change.
Shifting the power in Chile: What role for philanthropy?
In a time were environmental and health catastrophes are imposing the philanthropic agenda there is now a unique opportunity to bet for the future.