We’re Proud to be a part of Catalyst 2030

We’ve recently joined Catalyst 2030 to support their Africa Forward goals that so closely align with our own mission, vision and values. The regional goals for Africa as part of Catalyst 2030 include the following strategic shifts, and we’ve outlined how Blood:Water exemplifies each of these in our work.

1. Narrative shift

Africa Forward Objective: Restructure the approach to African narratives by profiling the African leadership of local social enterprises.

Our Engagement: At Blood:Water, we do this each day with our work in organizational strengthening and leadership development through the Leader Collective. The organizations we partner with are those on-the-ground making change happen in their communities, and our work should always amplify and uplift their efforts. 

Currently, just 14% of funds from international donors go to local organizations, but at Blood:Water 100% of program funding goes directly to local organizations in Africa.

2. Ecosystem development

Africa Forward Objective: Undertake initiatives to enable cooperation between governments and social entrepreneurs to strengthen the social enterprises ecosystem through collaboration and well-being initiatives.

Our Engagement: We’ve been able to establish cross-country learning between organizations through our work with the Leader Collective and organizational strengthening. These partner visits and co-learnings create an ecosystem for knowledge sharing and collaboration that encourages government and organizational cooperation. 

At Blood:Water, we’re not waiting for others to create these ecosystems — We’re working with our partners to develop them ourselves.

3. Funding

Africa Forward Objective: Redirect approaches to funding to ensure that at least 50% of all funding goes to African-led organizations directly, without the use of intermediaries and with particular consideration for youth and gender-focused organizations.

Our Engagement: We couldn’t be more aligned with this concept and priority of the African region of Catalyst 2030! 100% of our program funding goes directly to African-led organizations. 

While our partner portfolio changes over the years, most of our partners focus on youth and women-focused organizations.

4. Job creation and career counseling

Africa Forward Objective: Expand the number of jobs in the social sector by 10% and use workforce development programs and career counseling to recruit skilled African employees and bring young people into the sector.

Our Engagement: We embrace putting our talents to use and encourage our partners to do the same through our organizational strengthening efforts. Nearly all of our partners embrace some sort of counseling to provide better livelihoods for young people. Those include: 

BEACON OF HOPE   |   CABDA   |   COPRED   |   FOCCAD   |   PaCT

5. Training and capacity development

Africa Forward Objective: Impart practical skills and knowledge on Social Enterprises to help organizations scale their initiatives and satisfy funder accountability requirements.

Our Engagement: This strategic shift also directly aligns with the work we do each day at Blood:Water. Our organizational strengthening practices directly correlate to our partners’ ability to scale initiatives and increase their practical skills and knowledge. In fact, this has been our focus as we realize there are gaps in these types of programs, efforts and funding for them, which is why we developed our model.