About Allavida

What Allavida does

Click here to download a two page summary of what we do and why.

Our Work

Effective Community Organisations and Community Leaders

Through demand-driven, practice-based peer learning and training programmes, challenge grants and mentoring, Allavida works to strengthen the capacity of local organizations and their leaders to mobilise communities, develop and resource practical initiatives, lobby and advocate for change, build and sustain alliances, and find ways to sustain their own activities. Allavida also works to strengthen the resource base of trainers and resource people in all regions, and links these individuals and our partner organisations in the Allavida Development Partners network.

Progressive Philanthropy

Through research, publications, convening debates, technical support for philanthropic institutions and associations, exchanges and study tours, training, and challenge grants, Allavida works to understand traditions of giving, mutual aid and solidarity, to nurture responsive community-based philanthropy organisations, and link local philanthropy with the pursuit of local development goals.

Effective grantmaking and social investment

Through training and consultancy services, research and publications, and our own small grants programmes, Allavida works to nurture the development of community focussed grantmaking bodies and to explore the potential of social investment for resourcing local development. Allavida also assists international funding institutions – from small family foundations, to schemes established by multi- and bi-lateral donors – with a range of consulting services designed to increase the impact of funding. These services – outlined in Allavida Services – help resource providers establish effective development initiatives and appropriate funding strategies that can increase long-term impact for the benefit of poor and marginalized people.

Social brokerage

Through our own programmes and those of our close and trusted development partners, Allavida is able to offer a changing ‘portfolio’ of community projects and small enterprises that need grant funds and/or social investment. Allavida offers this portfolio to foundations, social investors and philanthropists who are seeking to make contributions that can impact directly on communities and people. Allavida offers a variety of cost-effective support services including programme design, grants assessment, monitoring, evaluation and re-granting.

Influence

Through publications, debates and other fora, Allavida seeks to use learning generated from our work to influence the agenda and strategies of all institutions involved in resourcing civil society and development at local level. Through this influence, we aim to increase the effectiveness of funding in terms of its impact on reducing poverty and enabling poor people and communities to build assets and transform their livelihoods.

How We Work

Allavida works through and with a shifting alliance of international, national and local organisations and associations, individual consultants, academics and researchers. This loose, informal alliance is committed to sharing learning and ideas, stimulating creative responses to local need, and collaborating whenever possible around common agendas.

In 2007, Allavida will launch the Allavida Development Partners Network. This will link our development partners – NGOs, foundations and consultants – a little more formally, and cement our commitment to strengthening their capacity and resources. It is this network that will generate Allavida’s expanding portfolio of community initiatives and enterprises. It is this network of practitioners and experienced consultants that underpins Allavida’s growing Services.

Research and Publishing

Allavida published Alliance magazine in the period 2001-2006, during which time the magazine grew to become the leading resource for foundation staff, philanthropists and other funders and social investors around the world. Having always ensured editorial independence, it was a natural step to help Alliance become fully independent. With support from a number of European foundations, this was achieved in late 2006 when we launched Alliance Publishing Trust. Allavida retains close links with Alliance. For more information on Alliance, go to www.alliancemagazine.org.

Goal and Mission

Our Goal

Allavida’s goal is to transform the livelihoods of poor and marginalised people around the world in the pursuit of social justice.

For Allavida, social justice must include notions of:

People securing rights to have basic needs met
Greater equity in the distribution of resources and of access to resources and opportunities
Equal worth of people and respect for diversity
Space for people to participate powerfully and safely in civil and political processes

Our Mission

Allavida’s mission is to transform the practice and outcomes of development funding, grantmaking and philanthropy in low and middle-income countries around the world.

We want to see development practice that:

Makes people aware of their rights and equips them with skills, knowledge and confidence to advocate for those rights;
Invests in the range of natural, cultural, social and human assets that exist in communities and helps people own and control those assets;
Encourages cooperation and networking between local groups in order to build solidarity and share learning, to influence policy, and ensure that accountability in development is driven by the experience of people not the needs of funders.

We want to see a new mix of development funding, philanthropy and social investment that:

Invests in long-term processes of change rather than short-term projects, addressing causes of poverty and marginalization rather than treating symptoms;
Recognizes the unique role of philanthropy in stimulating change through seed-funding and capacity building, and in creating foundations on which social and commercial investors can build;
Supports people as the active drivers of change, building on and creating assets that can truly transform livelihoods and opportunities.
Encourages active citizenship, including citizens and elected authorities actively working together to promote human rights and develop their communities.
Works on the basis of solidarity rather than sympathy.

Our Values

Values in society and the development process

Poverty or deprivation includes lack of income but also social inferiority, physical weakness, disability and sickness, vulnerability, physical and social isolation, ignorance, powerlessness, and humiliation. We therefore value approaches to development that aim for improvement in the well-being of people, incorporating social, environmental, physical and spiritual dimensions as well as the purely material. We value the pursuit of equity - securing rights, creating access and opportunity, and building capabilities necessary to achieve well-being for all people. We value pluralism in society and will support efforts to challenge intolerance and any orthodoxy that provokes or inherently creates discrimination and marginalisation of particular groups of people. We value the opportunity for all people to have a voice – to have the right, opportunity and ability to make a contribution to the debates and decisions that affect their lives. Underpinning all of these values is a commitment to work always in pursuit of non-violent means of bringing about constructive change at community level.

Values as an organisation

Allavida seeks to create an operating culture based on open and honest dialogue, team-working and collective decision-making. We value the knowledge and experience of our colleagues and institutional allies around the world and seek always to ensure that their voice is heard in our decision-making processes. We seek always to be flexible and adaptable, responding quickly to changing circumstances and learning from practice. We will make every effort to capture what we learn, both what works and what doesn't, to enhance our own knowledge and understanding, and to share this with others.

Our History

Allavida was established in August 2001 as a merger of Charity Know How (CKH) and Alliance magazine, both of which were formerly part of the Charities Aid Foundation. In the period 1990-2001, CKH made almost 1,000 grants towards increasing the skills, knowledge and experience of NGOs and community organisations throughout Central and Eastern Europe and the Newly Independent States. CKH also introduced longer-term training and development programmes which have become the foundation of some of Allavida’s work today.

In 2003, in response to Allavida’s expanding work in East Africa, a regional coordination office was opened in Nairobi. From 2007, the Nairobi office will be the administrative hub of Allavida’s network.

In December 2006, Allavida helped create and launch the Alliance Publishing Trust as a new independent charity to house and publish Alliance magazine.

Governance and Funding

Allavida is an independent organisation, registered as a charity in the UK, with an experienced Board of Trustees and Directors. Allavida is supported by European and American trusts and foundations and by individual donors. It also benefits from grants from organisations such as the Big Lottery Fund and the Department for International Development.