Agency and Resilience
AWDF’s Capacity Building programme therefore provides technical trainings, tools, grants and coaching support aimed at developing and strengthening grantees’ organisations and their work. We believe in helping build our grantees in various capacities and resourcing them past finances. Building stronger grantees builds stronger African women’s movements and stronger feminist activism for transformation. Our feminist approach to capacity building stems from our realisation that women have to work toward transforming their own self being through the development of their individual agency, and to work toward social transformation that challenge the existing social structures and power relations. In person trainings are designed as safe-spaces for women to build both technical skills and a greater sense of solidarity with each other.
AWDF defines “Capacity Building” as the processes that enable growth, strengthening and/or transformation of an organisation’s systems, strategies, governance, culture, and/or human resources. Our capacity building process looks at ways that we can nurture organisational systems to perform core functions sustainably, and to continue to improve and develop over time. We also focus on encouraging the growth of feminist organisational cultures- exploring questions of power, inclusivity and diversity, building the agency of staff and the people that organisations engaged, and in nurturing the growth of organisations with a ‘soul’.
The framework for AWDF’s Capacity Building Programme draws on our experiences and lessons as an African grant maker working on social change issues with women’s rights organisations at different stages of organisational growth. This framework is based on the premise that in order to deepen project quality, sustain impact/change in communities and society, and ensure growth and sustainability of the organisations we support, there is need to develop robust institutions at three (3) levels: organisational, individual and community.
The framework promotes a process of strengthening individual abilities, organisations, and systems to perform core functions sustainably, and to continue to improve and develop over time.
AWDF acknowledges that organisations are made up of both systems and structures and workplace cultures, relationships and ultimately of individual staff and constituencies who all contribute to whether or not organisations grow, thrive and deliver on their missions. In this light, the capacity programme is designed to provide support for both ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ capacities- with support in areas such as governance, administration and management, as well as coaching and other methodologies that address individual, inter-personal and organisational health.
Our capacity building process starts with a needs assessment to identify capacity building gaps of our grantee partners and to help inform the content and structure of each flagship programme offered. We identify qualified African women trainers and work with them to develop training content that is adapted to the realities faced by African women’s organisations. Our in-person trainings include sessions on ethics and values, as well as moments to reflect on personal leadership and providing a safe space to explore experiences of being women’s rights activists.