By Kelly Vo | Head of Corporate Partnerships & Fundraising
Dear our invaluable supporters,
It is that time of year when we have the pleasure of letting you know what the impact of your crucial support has been for the nonprofits through Narrow the Gap Community Program! The unfortunate circumstances surrounding COVID-19 have temporarily impacted many of our planned activities, however we nonetheless wanted to highlight some of the extensive impact which your support has made possible in the past year.
We are particularly proud of the capacity building workshops we held in the summer which were attended by more than 30 participant nonprofits, who were trained in writing project proposals, working effectively with the community and donors, and building and managing budgets for community development projects. These skills are crucial in ensuring that nonprofits can have a long term impact and not fall victim to so many of the difficulties faced by grassroots nonprofits that lack capacity.
Ms Thao, representing Teach for Vietnam, attended our event focusing on Community Philanthropy. She told us that her fundamental take away from the session was the realization that nonprofits have to “put community in the center and change from [viewing themselves] as beneficiaries [to viewing themselves] as partners and leader”. Ms Thu, who works for Knowhere Makerspace Educational nonprofit, attended a sharing day on proposal writing told us that she discovered a new approach during the day as “the guest speaker emphasized that to get the grant, [it was not about persuading LIN], but about persuading the community”.
Much of what the Narrow the Gap program aims to do is create networks and community buy in for the work being done by nonprofits and therefore it is also important to highlight the experiences of the people who volunteered for Narrow the Gap in the past year. Ms Huong who is a member of Grant Allocation Committee highlighted this in her testimonial, saying “It’s so lucky for me to have a chance to read a lot of projects from small, medium, and big organizations in varied areas in the whole country”. Khanh, who has volunteer with Narrow the Gap since March 2019, summarized exactly what LIN’s purpose is: “working with LIN’s staff in many activities made me realize that the best thing I can do for communities is not money [or] material things, it is knowledge, capacity, network, and what [is] most important is belief”.
That is all for now. Moving forward, we are also excited to kick off this year campaign titled "NARROW THE GAP 2020 - PLANET FOR THE NEXT GENERATION” working towards the Sustainable Development Goals set by the United Nation.
Narrow The Gap Community Program 2020 drives towards THE PLANET SET OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS (SDGs), including:
GOAL 6: CLEAN WATER AND SANITATION
GOAL 12: RESPONSIBLE CONSUMPTION AND PRODUCTION
GOAL 13: CLIMATE ACTION
GOAL 14: LIFE BELOW WATER
GOAL 15: LIFE ON LAND
In 2020, Narrow the Gap aims to provide 9 grants with a total value of more than $35,000 (~900 millions VND) to local nonprofit organizations which are addressing issues in Vietnam.
We believe in people effecting change for themselves. By providing financial, capacity building, networking support to local nonprofits who are addressing these environmental issues through Narrow The Gap, we aim to support the community leaders to test and improve the needed solutions for their own communities.
We hope you will continue to support Narrow The Gap in 2020. Grassroots movements such as these depend on grassroots support, and that's why we really need your help!
There are many ways for you to get involved either donating directly to Narrow The Gap on GlobalGiving or even create your own fundraiser to support Narrow The Gap by clicking here (it is a very simple step by step process)
If you have any questions about Narrow the Gap, please do not hesitate to contact me directly at kelly.vo@linvn.org.
Vo Ngoc Tuyen (Kelly)
Head of Corporate Partnerships & Fundraising
Links:
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
