educate girl change future-support 500 girl growth

How did "Concern Organization" work to transform the Aid and Philanthropy concepts to encourage communities to reclaim their prosperity and power?

For both the development and humanitarian sectors, capacity-strengthening activities have historically centered around the needs of external funders and partners. They are designed to address gaps and enable nonprofits and civil society organizations to respond to and comply with imposed requirements. This can include proposal development such as writing and financial reporting, formulating theories of change and logical frameworks, and project monitoring—skills that are required for a local organization to engage with the international aid system successfully but don’t necessarily improve the delivery of their services and impact for communities.

While these skills are important, they might be less relevant when prioritizing strengthening of skills for local needs. Therefore, we are in the Concern Organization focusing on building equitable partnerships with our communities through listening to our beneficiaries.

As program practitioners, we wanted to understand: what “equitable partnerships” look like in practice and what everyday shifts are required to make them a reality.

At their core, equitable partnerships are about shared power, trust, and mutual respect. Beneficiaries, who understand their need as well as community context best, must have ownership of program direction and activity.

The Reclaiming Power and Prosperity Program was set out to test the concept of equitable partnerships. The program uncovered Five key learnings from its journey to building liberating, equitable partnerships. These insights and actionable learnings work in practice and carry long-lasting impact.

1. Respecting community context and needs.
Understanding and centering community priorities and serving the community together is key to forming equitable partnerships. It helps provide the right support for different needs and goals. and leads to more effective, relevant, and respectful collaboration, ensuring positive results and impact.

2. Valuing community assets.
Community leaders and beneficiaries should be at the forefront of decision-making, defining their priorities and actions. With their deep-rooted connection to local knowledge and dynamics, cultural nuances, and earned community trust, they can effectively address community needs and align initiatives with local values. Their involvement and leadership mobilize resources, inspire participation, enhance the credibility of the work, and provide critical access to communities. This ensures sustainable and impactful solutions through stronger, more liberating equitable partnerships.

3- prioritizing trust and time.
Trust is essential for equitable partnerships, which involves fostering open communication, mutual respect, and collaboration—and takes time to build. Prioritizing trust and time helps to ensure value is placed on community needs, encourages engagement, reduces power imbalances, allows for true responsiveness to changing needs, and leads to sustainable, impactful outcomes that align with community priorities.

4. Mindset shifts collaboration, flexibility, and feedback.
Arriving with an open mind, free of assumptions, and focusing on actively listening to and elevating their strengths is essential. Flexibility is essential to effectively support partners and respond to their needs, as well as the needs of the community. Feedback mechanisms provide insight into what works and what doesn’t, fostering continuous learning and improvement to make the partnership more effective in delivery.

5. Sharing risk and accountability.
Racism fuels mistrust and creates funding barriers, with local knowledge and values often ignored. Research shows that aid programs are most successful when decision-making includes local actors, and when all partners share risk and accountability, fostering trust and respect for local expertise. This approach ensures inclusive, culturally appropriate, and effective programs that genuinely benefit communities.

At the end of this briefing report, we all not miss the chance to thank all our kind donors, supporters, and partners. 

Thank you from the bottom of my heart, all that we have achieved would not be possible without you.

Hanan Ebrahim and the Concern Organization Team

hanan@concern18.org