Civil
Society Activities
AKF's
Civil Society activities focus on extending, improving
and sustaining health, education and welfare services
for the poor by creating partnerships involving government,
business and citizen organisations.
What's New
Resource
Mobilisation Toolkit (public pages formerly at http://www.ngoenet.org/
have now been moved to this site). These pages include
the Trainer Manual for "Towards Financial Self-Reliance:
A Handbook on Research Mobilzation for Civil Society
Oragnizations in the South" by Richard Holloway
The
Conference on Indigenous Philanthropy
Introduction
This
theme draws together two long-standing Foundation concerns.
First, it provides an umbrella for the Foundation's
response to the oft-expressed needs of many of its partners
for advice and related institutional strengthening services.
It also seeks to promote an "enabling environment"
for the emerging non-profit citizen sector in countries
where the Foundation works.
His
Highness the Aga Khan first used the term "enabling
environment" in 1983 in Kenya, initiating dialogue
that led to an Africa-wide Enabling Environment Conference
in 1986. Since then, the Foundation has monitored those
aspects of those aspects of the wider environment that
most directly shape the attitudes and behaviour of governments
and business toward citizen organizations. It seeks
to promote laws and corporate policies that favour indigenous
philanthropic giving, thereby facilitating a break from
dependency on foreign aid. It also actively promotes
volunteerism as a vital way for local organizations
to root themselves in a renewable "citizen base".
This concern took shape in 1998-2000 at the Pakistan
Initiative for Indigenous Philanthropy, in the Conference
on Indigenous Philanthropy, held in Islamabad on October
16 and 17, 2000. The conferees there endorsed the Initiative's
proposal to establish the Pakistan Centre for Indigenous
Philanthropy, which receives Foundation support.
Crucial
Role of Grassroots Organizations
From
its earliest work in rural development, the Foundation
has emphasized the crucial role of strong grassroots
organizations. Its rural support programmes became successful
intermediary vehicles to facilitate a village-driven
approach to increasing rural incomes and asset building.
The Foundation found in them an institutional mechanism
that enabled it to channel effective support to resource-poor
settings. The original model of social organization
developed in northern Pakistan has been replicated by
a host of actors in diverse national settings. The diffusion
process continues as the Foundation in East Africa,
for instance, promotes the concept of community-generated
"mini-endowments". It is encouraging community
members to adapt and apply traditional savings and social
investment practices to create a sustaining financial
base for early childhood programmes.
The
independent citizen sector is composed of a variety
of such community groups. Because nearly all of them
require support services, the Foundation helps establish
"resource centres" to promote their sustainable
and equitable growth. The first two NGO Resource Centres,
launched in Pakistan in 1993 and Zanzibar in 1996, have
four inter-related functions: capacity building for
development-oriented groups; management training to
increase their efficiency; information and communications
activities to arm them with needed information and to
raise public awareness of their vital role in society;
and stimulation of an enabling legal, fiscal and regulatory
environment.
