Giving for Change programme - Palestine The aim of Giving for Change – funded by the Dutch government’s ‘Power of Voices’ programme – is to foster local giving as an expression of voice, civic participation, solidarity and dissent. The programme will build evidence around new thinking, approaches and leadership that support community philanthropy development.


Giving for Change will promote community philanthropy as a strategy for achieving community-led development by increasing local ownership, buy-in and claiming of rights, and by challenging the notion that development is something that is “done to” communities by external actors.


Against a global background of shrinking civic space, Giving for Change will encourage civil society organizations, including and especially human rights organizations, to value and adopt local resource mobilization as a form of constituency building, and as a way to strengthen their position as legitimate champions and defenders of diverse causes, with strong roots in the communities they serve.


#ShiftThePower. 
While the programme will maintain an explicit focus on strengthening rights and claiming capacities of communities in relation to public government structures, another dimension of it relates specifically to challenging power dynamics, and establishing more equitable practices within the international development system itself.


Programme activities will include action research, trainings and grants to stimulate local giving, which will be led in each country by national anchor institutions. The role of consortium members will be to help “weave” dialogue, learning and exchange across the programme itself, as well beyond to global platforms and audiences as part of larger advocacy and influencing efforts to transform development and philanthropic practice. The primary objective in Palestine is to engage and integrate the social, economic and financial resources/power of local communities to strengthen the social ties and create real movement to amplify change and influence the systems, the strategic planning process and identification of priorities from a community-based-perspectives, the decision-making process, the donors' schemes and strategies of funding. We are aiming to strengthen communities and civil society actors in their role of lobby and advocacy to promote for more respect and recognition for citizens’ needs and rights and in doing so contributes to improving the social contract between government and citizens as to an inclusive, sustainable society, is supported. The aim in Palestine is to impact community philanthropy and local resource mobilization so that larger development strategies by INGOs and governmental leadership plans for communities on a district level, and eventually on a national level, are informed by local community members and leaders who drive the ground work each day. 
Additionally, we strive to develop different streams of outside aid that better respects the constantly changing needs of local communities. We hope to merge this aid with more sustainable community philanthropy, which localizes giving as a form of expression to regain confidence in our own abilities to shape Palestine.  We seek to serve as both an example and develop a guide on healthy development strategies for other community organizations and flowering community giving foundations like our self, and seek to bolster a larger sense of “Al Ouneh” not only in our small community projects but across Palestine as a whole.