STAR-Ghana Foundation is seeking partnerships with organizations implementing their strategic mission and plans to advance gender justice, equitable quality public services, climate change and livelihoods and enabling peace and security. This Call for Partnerships is open to registered Ghanaian CSOs and local NGOs with current or active Strategic Plans and who have been operating for at least the last two years. Kindly find below, uploaded document in the link. This contains further details and eligibility criteria of the call for your information.
document CSSF Call for Applications (79 KB)
document Application Form Civil Society Strengthening Fund (87 KB)
Kindly send completed applications to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Applications should be submitted no later than 5pm on Wednesday 25th October 2023.
You can also call +233 (030) 2774488
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Ibrahim-Tanko Amidu inducted Special Star Achiever
STAR-Ghana Foundation's Ibrahim-Tanko Amidu, Executive Director, has been inducted into the Prestigious Northern Sector Youth & Mentors Achievers’ Awards Hall of Fame as a 'Special Star Achiever'.
He was inducted during an engagement with some civil society organisations (CSOs) in Tamale in the Northern region.
The engagement formed part of activities to mark the 5th anniversary of STAR-Ghana Foundation, a national centre for promoting active citizenship and local philanthropy for sustainable development.
The Foundation was set up as part of efforts to find a space, and a mechanism that will enable a better coordination of development efforts, and to ask the fundamental questions about the state of affairs.
Again, it was to find a space that will help hold the hands of very young organisations and support them to grow to take their places.
Alhaji Shani Alhassan Shaibu (left), Northern Regional Minister presents a plaque to Ibrahim-Tanko Amidu, Executive Director, STAR-Ghana Foundation
Ibrahim-Tanko Amidu is the Foundation’s first Executive Director and principal technical advisor, ensuring that STAR-Ghana Foundation is utilising, developing and applying best practices and providing inspired thought leadership within the organisation. Ibrahim-Tanko has been involved in development management, civil society strengthening and social development for over 25 years. He has extensive experiences that span from facilitating strategic planning processes, design and implementation of monitoring, evaluation and learning systems, institutional strengthening of state and non-state actors at all levels of governance and programme management. He has led in the development and implementation of social development and voice and accountability programmes and projects at all levels of governance, ranging from small integrated rural development projects to the multi-donor pooled national governance fund, STAR-Ghana.
Read more: Time For Africa To Look Within For Revenue — Civil Society Advocates
Ibrahim-Tanko is a seasoned development professional and has worked extensively with the Government of Ghana, local and international Civil Society Organisations and Bilateral Aid Agencies in Ghana. He was the Team Leader of the first and second phases of the STAR-Ghana programme, a multi-donor pooled fund.
Congratulations Alhaji Tanko!
STAR-Ghana Foundation builds staff capacity in Policy Brief writing.
STAR-Ghana Foundation has organized a capacity building training on Policy Brief writing for staff. The training sought to educate and equip the targeted staff with the fundamentals of good policy briefs and critical skills for tailoring policy documents to achieve the intended result.
The two-day training focused on understanding the basics of developing good policy briefs. It also highlighted the importance of clearly defining gaps and recommending workable solutions. The meeting noted, that applying the rule of accuracy, brevity and clarity helps to structure writing and focus on the essential action point in a policy brief. Participants were taken through the rudiments and types of policy briefs, how to structure it, how to give it the needed punch and who to influence among other crucial areas of consideration.
Moreso, the content of the presentation triggered questions and conversations bothering on what a more preferred structure for is achieving the intended purpose of the policy brief. Also, concerns over exercising the responsibility of spearheading policy conversations and or using focal persons to champion a course of action were rife among the participants who later sort clarity from the facilitator.
In his opening remarks, Executive Director of the Foundation, Alhaji Amidu Ibrahim-Tanko emphasized the importance of the training to the core functions of the organization. He maintained, for the Foundation to be able to use its work influence change, one of the critical tools it needs is a good policy brief. “This training is fundamental to the success of STAR-Ghana Foundation”, the Executive Director reiterated. According to him, “whether we’re talking about Peace and Security, our work in the North, Girls’ Education, Sustainability of the Civil Society sector, or Youth Development; this issue of how we use the evidence from our work to engage policy makers to influence policy making and implementation is paramount”.
The two-day training facilitated by Dr Dede, also involved practical exercises on summarizing an existing policy brief and redeveloping same with current information. The exercise culminated into a mock presentation to an inhouse panel by the two groups derived from the participants.
The renowned development practitioner, writer, and Policy specialist later tasked the participants to complete their assignments by updating the policy brief.
GfC Alliance Gathering 2023: Key Takeaways from STAR-Ghana Foundation
By Eunice Racheal Agbyendazi
The Giving for Change (GfC) Alliance gathered in the beautiful Kenyan city of Kisumu in August for its annual gathering.
The annual gathering is an important calendar event. It is the one platform that brings together all eight countries, across Africa, Asia, Southern America, and the Netherlands to exchange experiences in the quest to introduce and embed community philanthropy as a critical approach and tool for sustaining civil society and promoting civic space.
GfC Alliance getting ready for a field trip
This year, 2023, marked the mid-point in the five-year initiative, and so, the gathering was not only to celebrate the progress made but also to reflect, and re-strategize for the next two and a half years.
I and my colleague, Feruzah represented STAR-Ghana Foundation. Join us as we recount our experiences and reflections from the gathering.
We arrived in Kisumu on Sunday, August 20, 2023. We did not feel alone on our journey! We traveled with other participants including Samar from Dalia Association in Palestine, Jonathas from the Comua Network in Brazil, and Sawadago from the ABF, Burkina Faso. Our first reaction as we exited the airport was “What a beautiful city”! It was sunny with a cool breeze. Kisumu in many ways reminded me of my recent trip to the Rwandan capital Kigali. As soon as we sat in the car that picked us up at the airport, the driver asked us to put on our seat belts. He introduced himself after which he listened politely as we introduced ourselves.
Now, to our European friends, it sounds strange to be reminded to wear your seat belts, right? Well, in Ghana, it is not commonplace to have every driver and passenger wear their seat belts although required by law. In fact, for most people, the only motivation to wear seat belts is the presence of the police on the road. Similarly in Kigali, the vehicle would not move until everyone put their seat belts on. Also, the streets looked clean, and because it was a Sunday the roads were quiet. That evening I missed the group trip to the sunset beach where they enjoyed fresh tilapia from the popular Lake Victoria. I later learned that in Kisumu, tilapia is served in two ways-wet tilapia, which comes in tomato sauce and dry tilapia, which is without tomato sauce!
Our host, the Kenya Community Development Foundation (KCDF), did well by giving us the chance to familiarize with their work. On Monday, we had field trips concurrently to KCDF GfC partners in Kisumu. I went to Nyalenda and Feruzah to the Kisumu Community of Practice (CoP). In Nyalenda, we participated in the Nyalenda Young Turks community dialogue on sexual gender-based violence. The Nyalenda Young Turks is a budding community-based organisation made up of young people in the area who are committed to creating a Nyalenda where girls and women are safe and thriving.
Community dialogue in Nyalenda
Regrettably, I missed a second group trip to the Kisumu Zoo on Monday evening as I tried to catch up with work after resuming from leave.
The Alliance meeting started on Tuesday, by which time everyone had arrived. Upon entering the conference room that morning, I saw fellow participants exchanging pleasantries and I joined.
It is worth noting that the GfC Alliance is not only a group of organizations working together. It is also a community of individuals from all race, age and sex who connect at personal levels and care for each other. It was indeed a pleasure to reconnect with friends from the Global Fund for Community Foundations (GFCF), Wilde Garzen, and the African Philanthropy Network (APN), and to make new connections with others from KCDF, Uganda NGO Forum, and Macai Foundation. I also for the first time interacted with Meryl, a representative of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who was attending the partners meeting for the very first time.
From Tuesday through to Friday, we re-engaged on the ethos of Shift The Power and how we are ‘living’ it. This is a usual practice of the Alliance. We always remind ourselves, at least we become ‘preachers and not doers’.
This was followed by presentations of highlights from each of the 8 countries and was an important element as we listened to the GfC story from different angles. We also engaged on the mid-term evaluation. The analysis and findings corroborated country highlights. The findings from the mid-term evaluation both encouraged and challenged us. We received a pat on our backs for growing a critical mass of individuals and communities that are mobilizing support for addressing community challenges and enabling communities to claim their rights from duty bearers. We were also challenged to define and connect strategies across the three domains to better leverage GfC’s contribution to systems change.
Our key takeaways from the 2023 Alliance Meeting
• Build social capital around your work to make an impact. From the community dialogue, it appeared that the Nyalenda Young Turks commands the respect of the community stakeholders. Their work is extremely valued by the stakeholders. In the dialogue, we saw the representation of all the stakeholders that matter in Nyalenda, from the Council, the traditional leader, the University, and local artists to the Health and Education directorates of Nyalenda. There was also a representation from the Courts. From the accounts of the stakeholders, when Nyalenda Young Turks was being formed, they consulted them and asked about the kind of contribution they required of them. The Young Turks also ensured that the stakeholders are assigned specific roles on their projects. Indeed, all the stakeholders as they spoke of their work with the organization, used ‘we’, to indicate their sense of belonging and ownership of the mission of the organization. What does this mean for us? Money is important but it is not the only thing
that matters to achieve social action and change. The goodwill of people to work with you, listen to you, take actions upon your recommendation among others are equally important and those are the values social capital contributes.
• Everyone can solve a problem. How do you start? Identify a gap and start small to fill it. The history of Nyalenda goes to affirm that solutions to community problems are in the community and everyone is capable of solving a problem. The Nyalenda Young Turks was formed at the onset of COVID-19. This was also the period where communities had to learn to do many things for themselves as external funders had paused work. Their motivation was how they could promote young people’s participation in addressing the information gaps on COVID-19 in the communities, whilst laying the foundation for young people themselves to confront one of their greatest challenges-sexual violence and abuse. Young people were recruited as volunteers and trained to become COVID-19 prevention ambassadors and they have maintained this way of working with young people on many other initiatives. Like Nyalenda Young Turks, many community-based organizations are formed out of the need to offer a solution to a problem. What this tells us is that the solutions to development problems are within the communities and not outside them. As social change facilitators, our role is to recognize communities' capabilities and potential and build on them!
• We need others to carry out OUR vision. Nyalenda Young Turks recounts that their partnership with KCDF has enabled them to expand their work and reach more people within their communities. They acknowledge that the support from KCDF, in terms of funding and mentoring has enabled them to capitalize on their social capital to influence the implementation of the Nyalenda Council’s SGBV policy, which is leading to increased reports of violence and abuse, and the need for support for survivors. They also recognized that the guidance from external research has helped them to engage in a more evidence-based influence and share their stories more confidently. What this tells us is that having a vision alone is not enough. It takes ideas and resources from many others to realize it. But it is also important to build good partnerships that enable you to stay true to that vision.
Participants in a dance
All work and no fun they say is counterproductive. It was not only about work. We also learned about self-care and the need to take care of ourselves while contributing our efforts to change the world. Lately, self-care and personal well-being have become part of the agenda for meetings, including sessions on them. Ensuring self-care is crucial for maintaining physical, mental, and emotional well-being.
Here are some self-care tips you should try;
• Establish clear boundaries between work and personal life,
• Set realistic goals.
• Define specific work hours and avoid checking emails or taking work-related calls outside of those times,
• Learn to say no sometimes to additional work.
• Maintain strong relationships with friends and family members who can provide emotional support and companionship,
• Regularly disconnect from electronic devices and screens to avoid overexposure and give your eyes and mind a break.
• Learn to know when to ask for help! some strategies to help you prioritize self-care!