Equal Community Foundation is increasing their impact exponentially in huge thanks the to support of the collaborative, communal approach behind Project Raise.
Rather than focus on increasing their own budget, hiring more staff and doing all the work themselves, Project Raise mobilizes the large number of civil society organizations already focused on gender issues across India and encourages them to include boys and men in the fight for women’s rights.
Throughout the year Project Raise has continued to gain traction, spreading ECF’s approach to more and more organizations across India. In this quarter, 25 new member organizations joined the Project Raise online portal, 50 support calls were conducted for implementing partners, and two intensive “training of trainers” workshops were held for 43 participants from 11 organizations. All organizations at the workshops identified the relevance of the activity-based curriculum and facilitation methodology for work with adolescent boys, and each left with a drafted operational plan. Furthermore, two organizations began pilot projects and three more pilots were recently launched. We are so impressed by the incredible momentum of this project, proving that the will to include boys in the fight for gender equality exists and can be harnessed with ECFs strong leadership.
ECF has also joined forces with another one of GoPhilanthropic’s partners, AVANI Women & Child Rights, which raised funds to implement Project Raise with 500 of their boy beneficiaries! In July 2019, ECF held a refresher course for the AVANI team, with sessions from seasoned ECF facilitators on topics such as how to gently introduce the topic of gender to a group of adolescent boys and facilitate an open, honest discussion. This cooperation means so much to all of us at GoPhilanthropic – not only do we want to financially support our partner organizations, but also help them access learning resources, network, collaborate and support each other.
