OneVillage Partners
Solutions to poverty by communities, for communities
Location: Minneapolis, MN / Kailahun District, Sierra Leone
Sponsors: Laurie Greeno
OneVillage Partners: Grantee in 2022-23 and 2024
OneVillage Partners addresses multidimensional poverty in Sierra Leone by investing in individuals and communities to enable them to solve their own challenges. They provide project facilitation and monetary support for communities to lead their own development, and connect individuals and leaders with one another across communities to amplify their collective voices and actions for regional impact. Their core programs work together to tackle multidimensional poverty and to build toward inclusive leadership, social cohesion, gender equity, and resilience to improve well-being for all.
Sierra Leonean women, especially those in rural areas, lack the knowledge, skills, and confidence to manage finances, plan for the future or participate in household and community financial decision-making. Many training programs exclude illiterate or uneducated women who would benefit most from such training. As a result, OneVillage Partners developed a Nurturing Opportunities for Women (NOW) Program, a three-phase, picture-based education program, and curriculum to teach participants basic financial principles. The program segments include: Strengthening Household Finances, Business Skills, and Agribusiness and Advanced agricultural training.
OneVillage Partners is using an evaluation framework designed to produce outcome and impact data and to provide ample opportunity for staff and program participant feedback and insights so that they can alter programs in real time. A recently completed pilot program for NOW: Agribusiness, showed both very positive results and results that are being used to refine the concept and effectiveness. For example, a major challenge of husbands not wanting their wives to participate resulted in modifications to the program to provide counsel, support broader gender equity in rural communities, and include new tools to collect data on the household level changes in attitude and decision-making.
For more information, see: https://www.onevillagepartners.org/
GRANT SUMMARY AND PURPOSE
2022-23: A $30,000 grant will help fund the improvement and expansion of NOW to serve 380 women in eight rural communities. In addition, a grant of $2,883 in unrestricted funding has been awarded to support this mission.
2024: A $40,000 grant will partially fund the implementation of the Nurturing Opportunities for Women (NOW) program for 900 women in an additional 28 communities. NOW has evolved and improved its comprehensive three-phased initiative that teaches financial literacy, business skills, and agricultural best practices.
GOAL
The long-term vision is that program graduates are able to apply the tools from NOW to their own household savings and in their savings groups. These groups will more effectively plan, save, and invest thanks to the program and improve their own and their community’s overall well-being. Meanwhile, the increased public speaking and shared decision-making will have a positive social impact and will improve gender equity within the community as women are gradually viewed as important voices.
