The Financial Fitness Bootcamp 2022
The Resilience Fund is one of the funds managed by CivFund. The Resilience Fund supports the recovery efforts of organizations impacted by the shrinking civic space, dwindling donor funding and other social issues such as the COVID-19 pandemic. In several African countries, the space for civil society is closing due to legal and socio-political hurdles in accessing funding that is crucial to their work. For most civil society actors, it is no longer business as usual. The dynamics in operating environment have changed, and so civil society must change and adapt. Through the Resilience Fund, CivFund lives up to her goal of providing flexible, responsive, and accessible funding to civil society.
In line with the need to enhance the sustainability of Civil Society Organisations in Uganda beyond donor funds, CivFund organized a financial resilience boot camp between the 18th to 21st of July 2022 through its Resilience Fund.
The boot camp brought together 14 local Ugandan entities, as well as regional Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) from Kenya and Tanzania and was facilitated by experts on financial resilience is aspects like personal finance, banking and investment.
During the week-long deliberations, the sessions covered aspects of social entrepreneurship, saving for investments, strategies, and products for managing vulnerability as well as managing personal and business finances. Within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the uncertain funding environment, increasing social issues, and the economic depression plaguing Uganda currently, NGO actors were encouraged to include technology in their processes, and identify progressive donors and find solutions to financial dependence other than external donors, among others.
Healthy minds live in healthy bodies and therefore there were also sessions on physical fitness like dance workouts, boxing, morning walks/jogging, that were facilitated by workout experts.
At the end of the boot camp, the NGO representatives were each assigned a facilitator to act as a mentor as they take on the financial resilience journey.
Some of the memorable phrases that were etched in the leaders’ minds on departure were ,“It begins with you”, “Leadership”, “Growth and comfort do not co-exist”, “Be intentional and patient”, “the great ideas are within us”, “Save and invest”, “The company you keep influences the financial decisions you make”.
Resilience Fund aspires to Strengthen the civil society ecosystem by promoting civil society sustainability and allowing more civil society actors to operate regardless of the operating environment.