Giving for Change programme - Ethiopia 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. Giving for change in Ethiopia will be implemented based on three strategies. The first strategy focuses on unlocking the collective power of CSAs, in which Development Expertise Center (DEC), the Consortium of Self-Help Group Association Promoters (CoSAP), and the Consortium of Ethiopian Human Right Organization (CEHRO) will implement the project, targeting various Civil society Actors (CSAs), Community of Practices (CoPs) and state actors. They will be supported to lobby and advocate state dutybearers and international donors; to thus influence and change the existing practices of donation and power dynamics. 
The second strategy is aimed at influencing government bodies in their engagement with CSAs /CoPs. The government has the responsibility to facilitate changes and support CSAs. Accordingly, using evidence-based lobby and advocacy activities, the government will be empowered to shift the existing practice of power dynamism between local CSA and international donor organizations in order to promote the freedom of the local communities' voices.  In this process, various laws, polices and directives that have hampered philanthropic giving in the community will be lobbied and advocated by CSAs/CoPs and human right defenders. As a result, the government will adopt laws, policies and regulations that enable domestic philanthropic giving in the nation.
The third strategy aims to change the funding practices of International development donors; The project creates an evidence-based lobby stage for the CSAs /CoPs to lobby international donors to value the community’s contribution to their prioritized development needs and exercise their freedom of speech. Hence, international donors in Ethiopia will change the existing practice by adopting new polices and directives to support community philanthropy and enhance the voices of Civil Society Actors and Community of practices. 
With these strategies, the existing civic space in Ethiopia will be more open, with a focus on bottom up development of the needs' agenda, and all citizens can express their voices and opinions freely and exercise their rights.