We also begin with small pilots and believe that evidenced-based fundraising is slowly beginning to bear fruit.
As a new Coalition in a shrinking donor environment, WWSOSA has started small and minimised its core financial needs by having a highly streamlined Coordination Unit and undertaking its work in creative partnerships, which have yielded results that punch higher than our age and size.
Solidarity Fund
Funding from the Solidarity Fund enabled WWSOSA to hold a project for the Faith Action to End GBV Collective to pilot two critical training and mentoring programmes for faith leaders: A 10-month Faith Leaders Gender Transformation Programme, and a faith leaders’ training to better equip them to accompany trauma survivors. The project also included a 120-Day Communications campaign to highlight the role of the faith sector in ending GBV.
Gender Links and the Canadian Government
We are part of a Gender Links project called Women’s Voice and Leadership, funded by the Canadian Government. We partner with KZN Network on Violence Against Women in a multistakeholder innovative community-rooted project. KZNVAW are lead implementing partner to pilot two local community violence-free zones involving innovative whole-community prevention activities. We are also piloting four district Rapid Response Teams with all local stakeholders, including the faith sector, to build referral systems and safety nets for GBV survivors for healing and justice. This work aims to break new ground in achieving the objectives of the National Strategic Plan on GBV.
M-Sports Marketing
This donation has been offered to WWSOSA to use at our discretion, which has enabled us to consolidate some fundamentals like our communications capacity, and to help us continue some of the work of the Faith Leaders Gender Transformation Programme after the end of the Solidarity Fund funding.
This donor offers funding for much-needed small projects, which has included workshopping church leaders during COVID-19 about the challenges of GBV in the context of lockdown and translating some contextual Bible study materials for men on GBV into isiZulu.
DG Murray Trust
The DGMT Innovation Fund enabled us to implement the first pilot of the Faith Leaders Gender Transformation Programme, without which this would have been impossible. We are now in the second pilot phase of this holistic programme aiming not just at person transformational of faith leaders but also institutional transformation to create safe and inclusive faith communities that are able to address GBV effectively.
ACT Ubumbano
ACT Ubumbano is a solidarity partner, which has periodically supported WWSOSA and its community partners with small grants to fill specific short-term gaps and enable us to continue working when funding was low. During COVID-19 and after the floods, it has enabled us to offer data subsidy to allow our online activities to be inclusive of all, it helped fill a gap in the Faith Leaders Gender Transformation Programme. Its support stretches back to the time before we had any substantial funding to enable us to host an inaugural engagement between GBV survivors and faith leaders in 2017 (250 people), which resulted in a published dialogue tool for faith leaders to guide their GBV ministries. It is still widely used today.
This was our first major donor, which enabled us to put in place the core foundations to undergird our work. It also offered crucial funding to accompany our primary stakeholder, Phephisa Survivors Network, which has grown into an independent registered CBO that not only impact survivors’ lives but also amplifies their advocacy voices amongst service providers and churches.