New Delhi, 10 Nov 2023: A unique management development programme for community-based organisations (CBOs) from four states and an UT was organized in New Delhi under Change the Game Academy (CtGA) initiative. The objective of the programme was to make them self-sustainable in their respective local areas. 

Smile Foundation, in association Wilde Ganzen Foundation, the Netherlands has co-created the global capacity development programme named Change the Game Academy India.

Fourteen selected CBO representatives from the states of Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha and the UT of Chandigarh were included in the residential training programme.

The motto of Smile Foundation’s larger Empowering Grassroots endeavour is ‘helping community-based organisations become locally sustainable’.  

Smile Foundation provides a range of courses and modules for social entrepreneurs and local welfare initiatives in order to help them become self-sustainable. It includes good governance, leadership, project management, communication, resource mobilisation, and local fundraising. 

‘It is a great honour to be part of the training programme organised by Smile Foundation. So many wonderful and good experiences from across India about local fundraising and self-sustainability were showcased. These will also be useful in other parts of the worlds”, said Ms. Rachida Boukhriss, Project Manager, Wilde Ganzen, Netherlands. 

The third-party impact evaluation study on Smile Foundation’s Empowering Grassroots initiative reveals that 60 % of the trained CBOs now have dedicated fundraising teams, and 85 % of them have increased their local fundraising activities over the years. As many as 75 % organisations have published their annual reports, 75 % organisations have expanded their donor base, whereas 95 % CBOs successfully raised funds from individual donors.

“These trainings have been enabling CBOs greatly as they ensure the last-mile delivery of government welfare schemes and policies to the communities, besides doing grassroots work. This training programme on local fundraising will ensure the local organisations become more efficient, scale up their welfare work, besides making social projects sustainable locally,” Said Ms. Sarita Pradhan, Head – Empowering Grassroots, Smile Foundation.  

Traditionally, the Indian development sector has depended on large corporations, multinationals or international grant-making institutions for its major funding. However, these sources have often been out of reach for local social initiatives. With progressive policies, a rising middle class (prospective donors) and the path-breaking CSR mandate, several new doors have suddenly opened up for community-based organisations in India.

Smile Foundation’s Empowering Grassroots programme is designed to help such grassroots social initiatives become locally sustainable, without dependency on foreign resources. Aligned with the Government of India’s “Atmanirbhar Bharat” mission, Empowering Grassroots programme aims to help CBOs to become more efficient, scale up their welfare activities and enables them to tap locally available resources in order to ensure long-term sustainability of the social projects.

Smile Foundation has so far trained approximately 1,000 community-based organisations across India, out of which 400 have become self-sustainable locally, playing their small yet significant roles on the path to nation-building. 

Smile Foundation is a national-level development organization directly benefitting over 1.5 million children and their families every year, through more than 400 welfare projects on education, healthcare, skilling, and women empowerment, in over 2,000 remote villages and urban clusters across 27 states of India. Please visit www.smilefoundationindia.org