The Global Fund for Community Foundations and Root Change are delighted to welcome the inaugural cohort of the 2022 #ShiftThePower Fellows. Twelve Fellows from ten different countries, representing the diversity of civil society and ready to promote change and shift power from the ground up, were selected from over 140 applicants.
The Fellows from Brazil, Cambodia, Cameroon, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Philippines, Spain, Tanzania, and Uganda will be involved in exciting, innovative, and experimental grassroots and community-led work in the next six months. The Fellowship is aimed at deepening the weave of changemakers around the world and expanding the #ShiftThePower movement from the unique standpoints and contexts of each of the Fellows.
The cohort of Fellows include:
- Catherine Gordo, GlobalGiving, Philippines
- Deepthy Menon, Urgent Action Fund for Women’s Rights – Asia and Pacific, Cambodia
- Elizaphan Ogechi, Nguzo Africa, Kenya
- Eme Iniekung, Philanthropy Circuit, Nigeria
- Emmanuel Kivanyuma Waiswa Civil Collective, Uganda
- Jimm Chick Fomunjong, West Africa Civil Society Institute – WACSI, Cameroon
- Mariane Maier Nunes ICom – Instituto Comunitário Grande Florianópolis, Brazil
- Mwila Chriseddy Bwanga Africa Philanthropy Network, Tanzania
- Nino Ugrekhelidze VOICE Amplified, Spain
- Ogo Chukwudi, TrustAfrica, Nigeria
- Robert White, Tilitonse Foundation, Malawi
- Wanjiru Kanyiha Kilimani Project Foundation, Kenya
Visit here to learn more about each of the Fellows .
The fellowship is part of the Giving for Change program supported by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The program aims “to 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.”
How It All Began
#ShiftThePower, one of philanthropy’s most inspiring and dynamic movements for change, was born in December 2016 at the Global Summit on Community Philanthropy in Johannesburg. The movement is “a call for new behaviours, mindsets, and ways of working and a reminder both that few interactions are ever power neutral and that often, those we seek to ‘help’ have much more power – knowledge, skills, networks – than they are given credit for.”
Organized by Global Fund for Community Foundations, London’s Pathways to Power Symposium in 2019 took the movement to the next level by developing #ShiftThePower Manifesto for Change to find ways to bring together broader efforts to shift power. As part of the event, Root Change launched the Pathways to Power network map, a tool that supports the dedicated efforts of those participating in the Pathways to Power London Symposium and pre-Symposium “weaving conversations.” To date, the map shows 568 organizations around the world mapping over 1000 relationships around 12 collaboration areas. We hope that Fellows will continue to use the network map as a facilitating tool to drive strategy and to deepen and expand conversations around #ShiftThePower.