Global Partners for Development

Global Partners has been committed to impactful, sustainable, locally led initiatives since the organization's founding over 40 years ago. Today, the same commitments propel us forward in our programmatic vision of a world where even disenfranchised communities have the capacity to build sustainable solutions to the problems they face.

Global Partners' ultimate goal is to improve the quality of life and education in rural East African villages. To do this, Global Partners establishes authentic partnerships with local communities to increase civic engagement, bolster local capacity for project management, and invest in community-driven projects in local schools and communities.

Since becoming Global Partners, the organization has focused on community-driven development and we use partnership as a vehicle for sustainable education improvement in East Africa. To do this, we partner with communities to build their capacity to identify, fund, manage, and maintain their own education projects to address immediate needs.

Because we recognize that education is exceedingly important in the fight against poverty and that schools are often the epicenter of development in a community, our initial engagement begins with local primary schools. Districts and villages are chosen through careful research on the areas with the most need in the sector of education. Once communities are selected, our in country teams facilitate a series of meetings during which communities discuss the barriers that are keeping their children from attending school. Through these discussions, each community identifies an infrastructure project that they feel is of greatest need and at the end of this process, we provide a grant to bring their vision to life. To further promote community ownership, each school and its local community contributes labor, materials, or funding to their project. Global Partners is committed to ensuring that the community-driven education projects we support are sustained over time, so we train a locally elected leadership team in project budgeting, monitoring, and maintenance.

After this first project is complete, we support the community in developing the best ways to continue mobilizing local resources for future projects. We also connect them to a cooperative of local schools and relevant government agencies to continue organizing their resources and advocating for their futures after we leave.

Integrity is a key element of our work. Our policies and procedures were developed with the intention of providing scaffolding for integrity through consumer-driven projects, expert-driven methods, and a commitment to transparency among all stakeholders.

Partners: Our partners in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda provide invaluable local insight, experience, and project implementation expertise for our school infrastructure, girls education, water and sanitation, and health initiatives. Local communities contribute project management resources, partial funding, labor and materials, ensuring their full commitment to project success.

Staff: Global Partners' unique team of highly skilled staff in Kenya and Tanzania facilitate community meetings, provide leadership training, and manage projects in East Africa.

Our Board: Global Partners has a very active Board of Directors that is constantly striving to deliver the most effective new services and fine tune existing initiatives. The Board of Directors, in partnership with our staff and local partners, make up a network of experts in various fields that provide timely input on research-driven project methodologies, management techniques, financial transparency, and the latest in engineering practices for the highest levels of quality and cost-effectiveness in international development work.

Our Donors: Global Partners funds projects through an expanding network of donors who are able to develop a direct relationship with the projects and people they sponsor. Many of our donors accompany Global Partners' staff to Africa each year.

Since its inception, Global Partners for Development has funded hundreds of projects, large and small, and given millions of dollars towards funding sustainable solutions for communities in rural East Africa.

In FY 2018-2019 alone we:
- partnered with 1,709 community members to improve education for their children, 33,149 students, teachers, and community members benefited from clean water, sanitation, and hygiene projects;
- funded scholarships for 57 girls who otherwise would have been forced to drop out of school, increasing their risk of early marriage and teenage pregnancy;
- benefited 17,440 students, teachers, and community members through school infrastructure projects that created safe environments conducive to learning;
- and improved medical care for 904 community members.

From school infrastructure to clean water sources to rural health clinics, schools and communities brought forward innovative and locally relevant project ideas that provided insight into their daily needs, social constructs, political networks, and hopes for the future. All projects were proposed and managed by local people who embraced project ownership throughout the implementation process and have assumed responsibility for the project into the future.

In the upcoming year we'll continue to test, improve, and grow our Community-Driven Education program in rural Tanzania and Kenya. We'll work with community members and school staff to identify and implement projects that impact student attendance and continue to make sustainability a key component of the work we do, from maintenance, governance, and environmental standpoints.

We'll remain steadfast in our commitment to rigorously measure our results in order to improve our programs by measuring changes to quantifiable educational outcomes, such as attendance and test scores, as well as changes in local community engagement, governance, views of local people regarding education, number and quality of development projects, and networking with outside partners.