About Resilience Fund
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.
Goal:
Strengthening the civil society ecosystem by promoting civil society sustainability and allowing more civil society actors to operate regardless of the operating environment.The Fund adopts strategic and tactical interventions aimed at building up resilience and supporting civil society to respond with immediate, medium, and longer-term recovery initiatives.
Why is this work important?
a) Shrinking civic space: The space for civil society has been closing all over the world, with several governments instituting barriers to civil society, publicly maligning scores of civil society groups and harassing individual human rights defenders. Shrinking civic space infringes fundamental freedoms of expression, association, and assembly.
b) Responding to emergency situations: The COVID – 19 crisis was a wakeup call to many development agencies on the need to fund sustainably. Many donor funded organizations had their operations completely shut down while others could no longer maintain their human resources as a result of budget cuts. Emergency situations such as these as well as those that may be politically triggered create a need for more resilient entities that can stand the test of time.
c) Decolonization through Afrocentric solutions: The Fund believes in homegrown capacities within the global South and that African challenges will be best solved with African solutions and ideas.
What ideas do we fund?
a) Innovative financial resilience plans: The Fund will support initiatives that challenge traditional models and seek innovative solutions to build financially resilient and impactful institutions, tapping from local African contexts. The Resilience Fund will identify and support civil society actors that are facing crises to build their financial and strategic muscle to withstand the changing funding terrain.
b) Strong social justice ecosystems: The Fund will support efforts to influence power by disrupting dominant narratives and colonial practices. The Fund will support efforts that enable civil society work with those in power while still advancing social justice, in ways that enhance dignity and justice.
c) Learning and networking across regions: The Resilience Fund will support ideas that create a pool of technical assistance and service providers in specialized areas of resilience. These may take the form of hubs, learning and resource centers.
d) Wellness and wellbeing: Adopting an intersectional feminist approach, the Fund will support efforts that address challenges of civil society leaders’ burnout, stress, and other work-related injuries; enhance their resilience to handle the pressures that come with civic activism, catalyze reflections on their work and amplify their contributions to the community.
