Innovative Edge Session: South meets North in Power Shift – A Framework for Effective Participatory Grantmaking

At the RINGO Learn­ing Fes­ti­val in 2022, RINGO Lab mem­bers Char­lotte Tim­son and Mohammed Awal Alhas­san (the Idea Car­ri­ers) shared key learn­ings from devel­op­ing and test­ing the inno­va­tion: South meets North in Pow­er Shift – A Frame­work for Effec­tive Par­tic­i­pa­to­ry Grant­mak­ing.

How might we ensure that those most direct­ly affect­ed are in the dri­ver’s seat of INGO pol­i­cy and prac­tice and are not instru­men­talised in the inter­ests of per­pet­u­at­ing top-down mod­els of char­i­ty?

This pro­to­type is test­ing how inter­na­tion­al, nation­al and local actors can meet in ways that trans­form his­tor­i­cal pow­er dynam­ics and enable par­tic­i­pa­to­ry grant­mak­ing (PGM) approach­es to demon­strate com­mu­ni­ty- led approach­es to devel­op­ment agen­das. The PGM mod­el puts the com­mu­ni­ty at the cen­tre of all deci­sion-mak­ing, includ­ing fund­ing. The pro­to­type seeks to influ­ence the grant­mak­ing rela­tion­ship (includ­ing those from INGOs) on terms deter­mined by the south, with an accept­able meet­ing point to the north and a mutu­al under­stand­ing that PGM should be viewed as a process rather than a project.

Watch the record­ing of the Inno­v­a­tive Edge ses­sion here: