Your regular contributions to our Solidarity Fund help to strengthen the brilliant work our partners are doing in and with their communities. Learn more about them here and through our Community Space.
We might know and hear about the biggest charities, but there’s a more equal and impactful route for supporting global development. That’s to support smaller organisations – who are closest to the communities that they work with, and can identify their problems and priorities and work with them towards appropriate solutions. They are also best placed to respond quickly when things change or crisis hits.
Sadly, it’s these organisations that get the smallest share of charitable funding and it reaches them on disadvantageous terms. Funding tends to be on a short-term basis, must be spent in certain ways and on thematic priorities decided by donors, and often doesn’t cover the organisational overheads that they need to pay staff and keep things running.
Through your contributions to the Solidarity Fund, One World Together will change that, getting long-term, predictable and unrestricted funding to local organisations to help them thrive.
Please say a big ‘hello’ to our brilliant partners and join us in our community space where you can get to know them all better.
Community Savers is a women-led network of community associations and neighbourhood networks organising for greater social justice in their local areas. It is inspired by Shack/Slum Dwellers International, one of the biggest grassroots movements in the world, operating across 32 countries.
We’re proud to be a founding partner of the One World Together movement. As an organisation focused on social justice, unrestricted funding is critical to us to ensure we can adapt quickly to our communities’ needs. We sometimes have to organise quickly or on issues which are not priorities for funders, such as spatial planning or fighting against urban developments that run counter to our communities’ interests. We also have to respond to rapidly changing contexts, as we have seen during the cost of living crisis. One World Together donations have already let us set up crisis grants for vulnerable families who are struggling to make ends meet.
Community Savers have long been inspiring us with the work they do supporting and responding to their communities. Its members work tirelessly for their communities and you cannot get closer to the community than these savings groups: they are the community.
We’re also inspired by their links with Shack/Slum Dwellers International. These highlight the strengths of a global community that One World Together believes in, with communities learning and building strength from connections in all corners of the world.
Muungano Youth Federation brings together over 12,000 enthusiastic young people from informal settlements across Kenya’s cities. We have nearly 600 organised groups bringing together young people in the community who are deeply passionate about advocacy around various issues, including better access to basic services, proper housing, livelihoods and land tenure. We work as a Federation to design and implement diverse youth programmes that help to meet these needs.
Muungano youth have also established a vibrant online platform known as Know Your City TV (KYCTv), showcasing locally-led advocacy initiatives, sharing youth stories and amplifying their voices through a variety of media. KYCTv engages with a broad audience, raising awareness about the issues faced by young people.
We are delighted to join One World Together given their commitment to revolutionizing funding for global organizations and movements that work closely with the groups they represent. Funders may recognise the importance of young people in current and future development outcomes, but they are less willing and able to fund us through their existing systems. Where they do, it rarely offers the flexibility that enables us to meet and respond to young people’s changing needs.
Muungano wa wanavjiji is part of the internationally-respected and highly successful SDI movement, a global federation of urban poor communities that mobilises around savings groups to address community challenges and fight for more pro-poor urban development. In recognition that their traditional approach doesn’t meet young people’s needs directly, they established a parallel movement for young people in the community, providing opportunities for leadership, skills development, and for young people to be at the driving seat of the change processes they want to see in their lives, communities and cities.
Since we’re passionate about community and we’re passionate about young people – Muungano’s youth federation may be our perfect match! But we’re also especially delighted to partner with Muungano because we recognise that donors are less comfortable working outside of typical funding channels. All big donors might realise how important young people are to our futures – and how great their needs are in the short-term – but few are meeting this recognition with funding directly to young people.
We’re also so excited about giving Know Your City TV a new platform for sharing their experiences and successes through our community platform. Their high-quality productions will give our Global Citizens new insight into and deeper understandings of young people’s lives in Kenya and of why young people must be at the centre of solutions.
Picture this: a football club and a charity that are so intertwined, they form one inspiring entity. That’s us! We’re all about using the magic of sport (specifically football, or soccer, if you prefer) to make a positive impact on the lives of disadvantaged youth. Cool, right?
We kicked off (pun absolutely intended) in 2009, with a vision of leveraging young people’s love for football to build opportunities and help individuals take control of their lives. We empower young Zambians, helping them develop sustainable livelihoods through top-notch education and health activities. We want every young Zambian to reach their full potential and thrive. So far, we’ve reached out to thousands of children through education, health education, HIV testing, and by improving community school infrastructure.
Our team is like a family. We’ve got 17 dedicated staff members and over 5 amazing volunteers who know the local scene like the back of their hand and are super committed to helping the young people we work with. We stand tall on the values of Inclusion, Passion, Empowerment, Support, and Ambition.
You might wonder how we keep the ball rolling (more puns, yes). That’s where our pals at One World Together come in. They’ve completely revamped the way charitable giving works. Their system ensures that the funds we receive are predictable, unrestricted, and most importantly, long-term. This enables us to strategize for the future and respond to the challenges we face. So, when you contribute to One World Together, you’re not just donating; you’re joining a global community that directly engages with local communities and organizations they support. It’s pretty rad.
We have over 20 years of experience of working with vulnerable young people in Kenya and have provided accredited vocational and business skills training to over 2,500 young people, most of whom are girls, young women and young mothers. We want nothing to stand in the way of our students’ learning. We build our students’ self-confidence and resilience as well as developing their skills and provide them with counselling, life skills classes, mentoring, and practical support such as lunches, childcare vouchers and period pads.
One World Together is a truly progressive way to join us in supporting vulnerable young Kenyans. The Solidarity Fund provides funds directly to us, helping to overcome disempowering imbalances between charities in the UK and Global South. We are working with our UK partner to shift power and resources from the UK directly to us in Kenya. But it’s a struggle to find funders who are willing to support us directly, and without this investment and resources nothing can change. Your funds collectively builds this self-direction, enabling us to remain agile and innovative as we respond to the needs of the young people and communities we work with.
We’re passionate about the importance of investing young people. But we aren’t just supporting Play it Forward and Raising Futures Kenya because of the great work they do and the impact that they have on young lives in difficult circumstances.
One World Together emerged from a desire to disrupt existing systems of charitable giving in ways that magnify the power and resources that reach smaller and ‘local’ organisations rooted in the communities that they serve.
We are so impressed by the partnership and leadership that Play it Forward and Raising Futures Kenya teams are displaying in shifting resources and decision-making power away from the UK and towards their local counterparts in Zambia and Kenya.
It is only by doing this that organisations can be accountable primarily to the communities they work in and with. Recognising the role that direct and unrestricted funding can play in supporting and catalysing this process, One World Together are delighted to support them.