We believe in resilience in systems featuring Purity Kagwiria

April 7, 2021

Part of: The BUILD Program – Flexible Long-Term Funding

Transcript

[A Black woman with a buzz cut sits for an interview.]

PURITY KAGWIRIA: I like to think of BUILD as just having the peace of mind to know that the work you do matters, and it matters that you do it well. So, for us, what has changed is the fact that BUILD is allowing us the space to actually think strategically.

The organizational support that we’re getting through the BUILD grant is helping Akili Dada sort of solidify our ground. We’ve never had an institutional lawyer, and we didn’t stop to think, what does that mean to the staff, what does that mean for the brand of the organization, even for the safety of the people that we are working with. So BUILD gives us an opportunity to engage a professional who would help us draft a security policy, have the staff trained on security, have the staff just recognize that when we’re in the field there are certain things you can do and shouldn’t be doing, because that safety of an individual determines how they end up showing up in that space, the quality of the work they end up doing in that space. And we have a good opportunity now to just put that down on record and actually start living it.

[on-screen text: We believe in systems.
We believe in building resilience.
We believe in reimagining philanthropy.
fordfoundation.org/build]

[on-screen graphic: Ford Foundation logo: a globe made up of a series of small, varied circles.]

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Social justice organizations thrive with longer, larger, and more flexible grants.

In 2015, the Ford Foundation launched its Building Institutions and Networks (BUILD) initiative, a now $2-billion dollar commitment aimed at reimagining philanthropy and centered on trusting grantees.

Akili Dada, a leadership incubator for girls and young women across East Africa, was one of BUILD’s first grantees. Purity Kagwiria, former Executive Director, shares how BUILD allowed Akili Dada to create a security policy for field work, strengthening its impact.

“I like to think of BUILD as having the peace of mind to know that the work you do matters and it matters that you do it well. BUILD is allowing us the space to think strategically on what scale looks like. Most donors will think of scale in terms of numbers. BUILD has allowed us to think about scale in terms of ideas and how we think about our work and how we think about ourselves and just realizing that institutions are grown by individuals who are growing themselves.”

We’re reimagining philanthropy—BUILD provides 5-year general operating support grants and dedicated funding for institutional strengthening to grantee partners to build more durable, resilient, and impactful organizations and networks to combat inequality.

Learn more