Spring Impact launches fully-funded consultancy programme for Southern African NGOS focused on Women’s Empowerment

Two days a week, domestic worker Stella Nkosi leaves her home in Soweto to work in a private home in Emmerentia, an established suburb of Johannesburg. The sixty-three year old domestic worker has been working here for 20 years since her office job disappeared and likes the work. 

SPRING IMPACT LAUNCHES FULLY-FUNDED CONSULTANCY PROGRAMME FOR SOUTHERN AFRICAN NGOS FOCUSED ON WOMEN’S EMPOWERMENT

Applications are now open for Scale Accelerator: Women’s Empowerment, a new fully-funded scaling consultancy programme for locally-led NGOs in Malawi, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe addressing issues related to women’s empowerment

8 NOVEMBER 2022:

Spring Impact opens recruitment for Scale Accelerator: Women’s Empowerment, a fully-funded programme for ambitious, locally-led NGOs in Southern Africa who want to take their vital work to more people, in more places.

NGOs across Southern Africa provide indispensable support to women and girls to enhance their power, skills, and opportunities economically, socially, and domestically. Receiving the technical support and building the skills required to scale up will ensure they are able to meet the size of the barriers women and girls face at scale.

The programme will support NGOs through the key stages of their journey to scale. Participants will work collaboratively with a team of specialised scaling consultants and experts based in the region to figure out how to implement their programme, service or intervention elsewhere in a financially sustainable way.

NGOs will explore how to make the most impact in new locations and identify how to work with partners to deliver their work to more people. The support will be tailored to each organisation’s needs and will focus on building scaling approaches for long-term impact which retain quality and depth at scale.

Daisy Isimbi is a 21-year-old university student studying Business Management with an interest in International Business. A friend introduced her to Youth Development Labs (YLabs), which conducts a co-design workshop exploring methods to connect young Rwandan entrepreneurs and unemployed youth. She chose to attend because she wants to play a part in solving youth unemployment. Participants representing each group divide into focus groups. They then come up with creative ideas and solutions, create mock business plans and initiatives, and challenge the functionality of each other’s proposals.

Scale Accelerator: Women’s Empowerment is specifically aimed at locally-led NGOs and coalitions of organisations working in Southern Africa and delivering solutions that address issues around women’s empowerment. This means solutions that support women and girls to enhance their power, voice, skills and opportunities in the economy, at home, and in their community.

Scale Accelerator, Spring Impact’s flagship programme, originated in the UK. Since 2015, over 50 ambitious NGOs at the frontline of addressing key societal issues have participated. As a result, many have increased their reach and impact, expanded their solution to several locations, and gained funding for their next phase of growth.

The programme is based on Spring Impact’s unique scaling methodology and consultancy approach, which has been used to support over 300 organisations across the world to scale up sustainably.

Scale Accelerator: Women’s Empowerment has been developed with the ambition of enabling locally-led solutions to create even greater impact. Spring Impact’s ambition is that the programme will build a movement around scaling impact, where leaders and teams across the wider NGO sector are equipped with the frameworks, tools, and networks needed to continue their own scaling journey and inspire the journeys of others into the future.

Commenting on the launch of the programme, Mohamed Osman, Spring Impact CEO said:

“There are fantastic NGOs across Southern Africa which work day in and day out to support women and girls to enhance their power, skills, and opportunities. Their impact is invaluable. Now imagine how many more lives they could change for the better if only they delivered their work at scale.

Oftentimes, NGOs have limited capacity to respond to the demand they’re facing and can feel stuck in an ongoing cycle of delivering short-term projects, without the space and support to work out how to be more impactful and reach more people.

Partnering with NGOs to scale the impact of their solutions will ensure their indispensable work can benefit more women and girls, and ultimately lead us towards a fairer, better, and equal future for all. This is why we’re thrilled to be able to offer this fully-funded consultancy programme, and help ambitious leaders identify how to turn their ambitions for greater impact into reality.”

Applications for Scale Accelerator open on 1 November 2022 and will need to be received by 12 December. The programme is free of cost for the organisations selected to take part. For more information, click here. To check whether you’re eligible for the programme, visit this link.

South African girls (from the Xhosa tribe) working together on their studies at an old worn desk in a class room in the Transkei region of rural South Africa.

Notes to Editor

Interviews and case studies, available on request.

For more information please contact:
Iulia Schiopu
Marketing and Communications Manager
Spring Impact
iulia@springimpact.org

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About Spring Impact

Spring Impact (formerly the International Centre for Social Franchising) is a mission-driven charity that exists to support the scale up of social innovations, with the ambition to address social problems at scale. A global organisation, with offices in both London and San Francisco, it was founded in 2013 by Dan Berelowitz, who is a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader.

Working with over 300 projects, both within the UK and internationally, Spring Impact’s partners and clients have included large INGOs and institutions, such as USAID, Marie-Stopes International, Population Services International, larger UK charities such as the NSPCC and Leonard Cheshire Disability, as well as smaller community-based organisations such as WeVolution, MayDay Trust and Reclaim.

For more information visit our website or download our Social Replication Toolkit. To stay up to date with our latest news, follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.