LSF Project Summary - Spark MicroGrants
Sasha Fisher, Spark MicroGrants
Hello LSF,
Thanks so much to everyone who has been posting and participating on this forum. It’s been a lively part of my past year and I love learning about new programs and organizations. Today I’m posting a brief description about Spark MicroGrants, the NGO I am working to build in East Africa. Please let us know if any questions or thoughts cross your mind on our model – we love hearing input.
Today, there is an exciting move towards believing in the poor to take hold of their own development. Microloans provided a revolutionary approach, one that entrusts individuals in poverty to start new businesses. People facing poverty however, still lack opportunities to engage in their own social sector development. We need to start trusting communities to be invested and innovative in their social sector development. We can do this through Spark MicroGrants.
Spark is pioneering a new approach to aid through proactive small granting. We reach out to rural poor villages and help them design, implement and manage their own social impact projects. Incredible local facilitators work with each group through a three-month proposal development process to build organizational capacity and leadership. The village members vote on a communal problem, break into focus groups to discuss possible solutions, vote on a final project and develop their budget, sustainability and action plan. Spark connects each group with subject matter experts to review their project plans. Once the plans are complete, Spark awards the community with a MicroGrant so they can put their ideas into action.
Communities have worked across sectors to realize projects that are cost effective, locally sustainable and high impact. For example; a school was built with a $1,600 microgrant for 90 students, an agriculture cooperative was formed for 72 families with a $3,000 microgrant, an electricity line was built for over 120 families with a $2,000 microgrant. Projects are sustaining and many of them are growing.
We believe that the microgranting model can be used around the globe to invest international aid resources more efficiently and effectively. Do you think this is a viable global model? Would it work in the region you are working in?
Best,
Sasha
Aaron Bukenya BESO-Uganda
Dear all,
I add my sincere thank you to that of Sasha for every one who has posted in LSF, I have had a chance to know and learn from wonderful projects through the LSF.
I am happy to be one of the first facilitators of Sparkmicrogrants, I helped facilitate three microgrants in Uganda among which was the school in wanteete village.
It was a lot of fun and a lot to learn from the community, you always have the chance to hear from the people who are suffering from the community concerns and to learn from them.
The model is so wonderful because it gives the people the chance and powers to drive their own development; for the organisations involved they learn about different community concerns and this helps the organizations to identify other pressings needs for the community; fore example in wanteete village during the microgrant meetings we found out that some of the women who were involved in the microgrant process had formed a group of 15 HIV/AIDS women, they shared to us their problems including lack of medication, they were granted a nano-grant from Sasha fisher and from BESO as well and now they are working on this project to grow and help them selves. Another group of women in Kitimbwa have passed on the knowledge they got from the trainings to others and they continued to mobilize them selves and are forming a SACCO adopting some ideas from SparkMicrogrants, they have realized they they have the potential with in them selves to drive them selves out poverty.
The model is good and should be supported and adopted world wide, go! go! Spark Microgrants.
Aaron Bukenya
Executive Director
Bugerere Education Support Organisation (BESO)
P.o Box 11348 Kampala-Uganda
website: www.besoug.org Tel: +256712267770
.....Supporting children education and empowering rural women........
......"Building Hope for the future"........
Date: Tue, 21 Feb 2012 07:49:44 +0200
Subject: [LSF] LSF Project Summary - Spark MicroGrants
From: sasha....@sparkmicrogrants.org
To: local-solu...@googlegroups.com