Reciprocal Exchange Program

The goal of the project was to provide two intensive, four-day Grant Writing Workshops in Dar-es-Salaam and Mwanza, Tanzania for 100 young entrepreneurs, civic, and public management leaders to enable them to acquire skills to write grants to support their worthwhile projects. The project sought to address the lack of access to funds and lack of diversification of funding sources—which are significant challenges to continued professional and institutional growth for many organizations led by young leaders in Tanzania. Young leaders—participants benefit from this project in scaling up their ventures and have more impacts in their communities. The workshops fostered knowledge sharing and helped participants to get deeper insights into key skills in grant-writing, including the essential elements of a successful proposal, strategies for targeting specific funders, and do’s and don’ts for successful design and execution of grants. Through hands-on, participatory activities, the workshops offered a guide to the technical details of grant-writing. The workshop also outlined the stages of grant-writing and highlight grant-writing best practices. The project was implemented in 2018 with a support of US Department of State under the Reciprocal Exchange Program ran in conjunction with IREX. The securing of this project was a result of Himiza Social Justice’s Executive Director, Bernard Otieno, to attend a Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI) in 2016, a US Department of State program started by President Barack Obama to invest in the leadership of African continent. So this funding brought Professor Jesse Lutabingwa, a professional from the US to come in Tanzania and conduct the two workshops on grant writing to young CSOs leaders. Thus the project was implemented in collaboration with Professor Jesse Lutabingwa from Appalachian State University, USA, Tajiel Urioh from The Green Icon and Bernard Otieno from Himiza Social Justice.