What We Learned from Our Community-driven Organization Partners During Our Visit to Rwanda

This year, for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic, AMPLIFY Girls brought together partners for in-person country meetings. Starting with Rwanda in March, this was an opportunity for the team to witness our partners' work on the ground and for AMPLIFY Girls to strengthen our network of community-driven organizations (CDOs) at a country level.

From the 13th to the 15th of March, the team visited our new Rwanda partners: Our Sisters Opportunity (OSO), Glorious United for Rural Development (GURD-Rwanda), and Impanuro Girls Initiative (IGI) based in different regions of Rwanda. This allowed us to gain perspective on their programming and experience their geographical context to better support them.

We met with their staff working with girls in communities and learned that our partners are receptive, inquisitive, and open to learning. At Impanuro Girls Initiative, we spoke with Awali, their M&E officer who also serves as their finance officer due to lack of capacity. Winnie Nyabenge, our Director of Partner and Organizational Learning, who spoke with Awali, described the conversation as eye-opening. The learnings and needs expressed during the conversation would help us tailor our future training to their needs.

While visiting GURD-Rwanda, we talked to the Catholic sisters who conduct program sessions with the girls. One thing that stood out from this visit was their openness to conducting Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) among adolescents in schools. Seeing the buy-in from the leadership and government, which makes CSE adoption easy, was refreshing and a true testament to how governments can support community-driven organizations' work.

AMPLIFY Girls Team with Rwanda Partners

After the site visits with our new partners, starting from the 16th of March, we brought together all our Rwanda partners for a 2-day in-person country conference in Kigali. When sharing about the visit, the team felt that the in-person experience was exactly what the team and the partners needed.

‘The value of convening people in a room to interact and understand each other cannot be understated. There are a lot of nuances that are lost to the virtual space.’ Anika Jane, our Head of Advocacy and Partner Management says.

The conference began with speed networking, providing partners an opportunity to interact and learn about our new partners and their work. Partners also shared their strengths and areas of focus. From this session, partners expressed excitement about finding synergies with other organizations and their willingness to drive collaboration initiatives independently at the country level.

Observing our partners interact, share experiences, and emphasize the need for collaboration reaffirmed our belief that community-driven organizations are closest to the community and best equipped to understand its needs. It reinforced our commitment to amplify their voices and highlighted the importance of fostering national-level collaboration among community-driven organizations.

“Building the network at the country level is key. Proximity is key… community organizations have common issues and common understanding at the national or country level… We could observe how invested they are in solving the issues that girls are facing in the community and their passion for it. They (CDOs) are a bridge between the needs and challenges (that girls face) that we need to scale up for advocacy,” Winnie stated.

Following the speed networking session, we conducted a partner-led experience-sharing session featuring SACCA-Rwanda and Komera. They shared insights into how they implement agency-focused programs for girls in their communities. Both organizations showcased how they interpret their agency survey results, which are collected through programs implemented in partnership with AMPLIFY Girls. These sessions enabled our new partner CDOs to understand how they can leverage the experiences of other partners to implement their own agency-focused programs and measure program progress.

During these partner-led sessions, participants also had the opportunity to discuss the challenges faced by community-driven organizations and the strategies employed to address them. This provided valuable insights for us to develop effective strategies to support our CDO partners.

One challenge unanimously expressed by our partners was the issue of founders' fatigue among community-driven organization leaders. This highlighted the importance of providing mental health support to these leaders and founders who bear the responsibility of both the community and the organization. Holding the vision for a community and an organization can be demanding and takes a toll on leaders.

“This is why the AMPLIFY Girls network is important. To bring together people going through the same challenges and experiences and try to make their lives easier through referrals, recommendations, and introductions to shareholders or partners that can create programs and systems that help community organizations work better,” says Anika.

During our time with partners in Rwanda, we recognized that community-driven organizations have unique contextual and structural differences that shape their experiences. Our visit emphasized the importance of acknowledging these differences in order to provide effective support to community-driven organizations. GURD-Rwanda and Impanuro Girls Initiative, two of our partner organizations, exemplify this diversity in organizational development. While GURD-Rwanda focuses on building a local fundraising network to sustain its programs, Impanuro Girls Initiative leverages global networks for fundraising. These nuances must be considered to effectively address the specific needs of each community-driven organization.

AMPLIFY Girls is committed to supporting community-driven organizations at different stages of development, ensuring agency and opportunities for all girls, as well as providing resources and recognition to the organizations that support them. We achieve this by actively listening to our partners, offering tailored training and workshops to enhance their capacities, and connecting them to our extensive network and global opportunities such as the upcoming Women Deliver Conference in Rwanda. Such initiatives enable organizations like GURD-Rwanda to network and enhance their sustainability in the future.

As we continue to listen to community-driven organizations, we hope that the insights gained from our in-person experiences with our partners can guide other actors in the development field to adopt these best practices and better support the needs of community-driven organizations.