HOW WE WORK
The Asfari Foundation supports three thematic areas: Civil Society, Innovation & Entrepreneurship, and Knowledge Production & Influencing. We provide long-term funding for organizational development and core costs, allowing civil society organizations (CSOs) to invest in their growth, impact, and sustainability. We also connect actors from local, regional, and global networks who share a vision for the region and invest in knowledge-sharing. We aim to build a global community of practice dedicated to social and economic change in the region, guided by evidence and experience and led by local CSOs.
For young entrepreneurs, we offer funding and support from ideation to impact investment, and we develop innovative learning solutions to meet the needs of students, jobseekers, and employees. We invest in organizations with innovative solutions to social problems and promote knowledge-sharing.
Through our partnerships and relationships with academic institutions and think tanks, we fund knowledge production and exchange. We connect relevant organizations, academics, policymakers, and activists through convenings, events, and coalitions to create change for communities across the region.
We aim to learn from our experiences, good or bad, to improve our work constantly. We know this will help us leverage our funds and our networks to achieve real and lasting change.
Our Key Operating Principles:
Collaboration: we collaborate with all stakeholders in our ecosystem, particularly our funding recipients, to achieve our ambitious vision. We seek to actively build on each other’s success, learning lessons from the experiences of others and sharing our own learning, so that our strategies and successes complement and reinforce those of our partners.
Learning: we democratise access to learning and facilitate experience exchange. The Foundation has a wide and diverse network of partners. These range from local-level CSOs – which produce practical solutions to social challenges – to academic institutions, think tanks and policy makers. The Foundation facilitates these stakeholders’ access to high-quality learning content and enables them to exchange knowledge and experience.
Impact: we invest in and promote evidence-based research and practical solutions. We gather structured, evidence-based data from our partners to help assess the effectiveness of partner-led solutions, and to quantify the value of investing in entrepreneurship and innovative approaches to social impact.
Local Focus, Global View: we take local to global. Our partners’ rich experience could – and should – be a substantive contribution to global research and learning, typically the remit of the global North. We participate and facilitate for our partners to participate in international arenas, so that their challenges, successes and lessons learned influence policy and practice at the regional and global level.
Development: we invest in the capacities of local organisations to govern themselves effectively and serve their communities well. Diverse, competent, accountable CSOs with engaged stakeholder communities are critical to our vision for the region; supporting their development safeguards their sustainability and strengthens their relevance and impact.