sustainability

Months of Change: An Update from Adonai

Co-Authored by: Pastor Aloysious Luswata and Bruce Karmazin.
Pastor Aloysious Luswata is the Director of Adonai Family Uganda and Bruce Karmazin is the President of US Friends of Adonai.

These are exciting times at the Adonai Child Development Center! And our US friends are the reason. We'd like to share just some of the important happenings over the past few months.

A New Strategic Plan Gives Us Direction for the Future 

They say that when you fail to plan, you plan to fail! That's why after nine years in operation, we are delighted to be coming to the end of our first strategic planning process. A strategic plan looks at an organization's goals and develops specific strategies and actions, and a budget, to accomplish those goals over several years.

It's been tough work over the last few months. With the help of a management consultant, paid for with a donation from a US donor, we talked with many people in the community – our friends and supporters, our faculty and staff, the parents of children in our care, and even the children! We looked at our strengths as an organization and our challenges and how to make the most of our situation. But we now have a roadmap for the future.

Kids Health and Community Health a Top Priority

Of course, one of the most important parts of our plan is making sure our kids – over 300 on campus – are healthy. It's amazing to people in the US that some of our children come to Adonai never having seen a toothbrush, or having had an eye test! We've done our best with modest donations over the years but we need to do more. And this year we're taking a very big step.

We’re equipping a small infirmary. And we’re hiring a village health worker whose job will be to make sure our children get what they need.

But more than that, our new village health worker will be doing outreach in the surrounding village. We'll distribute mosquito nets to protect people from malaria, and provide HIV/AIDS education.

Another priority will be making sure that girls who can't afford them have access to sanitary pads. Without sanitary pads, girls stop coming to school when they get their periods. They fall behind and eventually more than a third of girls in Uganda drop out of school. They give up their future and Uganda wastes an important resource in the country's development. That's not acceptable.

An important part of our plan to ensure the health of our children is to make sure each has safe drinking water. This year we will complete the water system with the purchase of two water tanks. We will lay the pipes that will allow us to pump water from our borehole to our tanks for storage and purification. We're very excited about that.

Our Friends in Illinois Are Key to Our Success! 

Like any nonprofit organization in the US, Adonai depends on the good will and support of our friends. None of our progress would be possible without your financial support. 

We have a growing number of people and organizations around the world but our friends in Illinois are leading the way – and are responsible for much of our progress.

The Northwestern University chapter of GlobeMed sent their first student mission last year. They did a health survey and identified the need for community health support. In August, a new group will return and participate in outreach on reproductive health in the village.

A faith-based organization called Fit2Serve, from Concordia University in River Forest, Illinois just got back from a school training program, spending two weeks working with the children and teachers of Adonai.

Finally, we are grateful to the kids of Allowance for Good, for your solidarity, and for making the commitment to our water system and helping us bolster our solar power capability.

Thank you!

Learn more about AfG's relationship with Adonai on our website.





Assessing Worldwide Human Rights

By: Jackson
Jackson is participating in Allowance for Good's autumn 2013 Emerging Leaders in Philanthropy program.

This week at EPL session eight, we learned about the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. These eight goals were set in the year 2000, to be completed by 2015. These goals include: eradicating extreme hunger and poverty, achieving universal primary education, promoting gender equality and women’s rights, reducing child morality, improving maternal health, combating HIV/AIDS and other diseases, ensuring environmental sustainability and creating a global partnership for development. A great deal of progress has been made towards achieving these goals, but there is still much work to be done in order to accomplish them by 2015. Whether or not they are entirely accomplished by 2015, these goals have set us on the right path towards bettering the quality of life for all, all around the globe.

This week Maya Cohen, the executive director of Globemed, visited us in class. Globemed is an organization that partners groups of university students with local organizations in less developed countries looking to better their own communities. These partnerships last through multiple generations of students, and focus on creating a tight bond between the students and the organization. The students typically raise funds for the organization, but also contribute physical service in an annual trip to visit the partner organization. Ms. Cohen explained this to us, as well as how Globemed’s focus is not only on the health of a community, but the quality of the community as a whole. Different organizations working within the same community can often achieve a greater affect than one organization alone.

It has been said that true philanthropy is done through the donation of one’s time, talent and treasure. This made me skeptical of Globemed’s credibility as a truly philanthropic organization, considering it is difficult to donate anything but treasure from thousands of miles away. What sets Globemed apart from other organizations though is the unique one on one partnering of students and organizations that lasts well past any one student’s time at their university. Unlike other charitable organizations, Globemed follows the money they raise and help the local organizations find the most efficient way to spend it. This truly makes it a philanthropic organization.

At the end of class, we partook in an activity titled “What is a Human Right?” In this activity, we brainstormed ideas of what are basic rights all humans are entitled to. Responses varied from basic necessities such as food, water and shelter, to more idealistic answers such as a right to representation, a right to fair compensation for services and a right to freedom from persecution. It struck me how many of these human rights we take for granted in the U.S., and how even if the U.N.’s millennium goals are accomplished there is still a long way to go to moral and social equality. Many people worldwide do not have access to what we consider basic necessities, and it is our job to advocate for equal rights for all.

This was one more excellent week at EPL, where we all learned a lot and engaged in meaningful discussion. There is no doubt in my mind that next week will be even more productive than this week was.
Jackson presents to his fellow ELP students.

Delving Into Venture Philanthropy


By: Orleana
Orleana is participating in Allowance for Good's autumn 2013 Emerging Leaders in Philanthropy program.

Last Thursday at ELP, we discussed venture philanthropy. Venture philanthropy is defined as the utilization of techniques from venture capital finance and business of management, combining them to achieve philanthropic outcomes through business world means.  Essentially, venture philanthropy is the financial support of new, non-profit organizations/potentially risky social ventures with promise or a significant goal in mind that requires aid to be recognized. Venture philanthropy allows these young organizations to mature and ground themselves, hopefully achieving self-sustainability after a set amount of years. 

Venture philanthropy is focused around providing financial support for and promoting small, new or underfunded organizations. Venture philanthropy enables emerging nonprofits to flourish through the giving of grants over a period of time. Both old and new organizations apply to receive grants, which, after an inspection by the organization supplying the grants, are given yearly for a certain number of years.

This week we had a great guest speaker, Sejal, come to class to discuss her work with The Springboard Foundation, a volunteer run group that supplies grants to beginning nonprofit organizations, with a focus on after school programs.  While affiliated with a variety of organizations, (having worked in the nonprofit field for the last fourteen years) Sejal is currently the Managing Director of the Springboard Foundation, and during Thursday’s class explained the goals of the Foundation and described its interactions with other nonprofits.

What I thought was one of the more interesting points in our discussion about The Springboard Foundation was its careful maintenance of the organizations they supply grants to. They check in with the organizations to see that the money they give is being spent productively, and making a successful change in the program. The Springboard Foundation definitely puts a lot of time and effort into getting emerging nonprofits running steadily, and I think that making sure the grants that they give are being used to get the maximum results is really important.

Near the end of class, we carried out a group activity where the class split into groups to create our ‘own’ venture philanthropy based foundations. We discussed prospective foundation names, goals, statements, and fiscal requirements, and each group presented our finished results at the end of class. While our projects were pretty small scale, they really made me appreciate all of the planning and hard work that goes into venture philanthropy, (though that could be said about any philanthropy), and the people and volunteers who come together to make it run so that other nonprofits can flourish.
Orleana, bottom right, listens to an ELP guest speaker during the Thursday night class.