Masterplan 2014-18

STR ØMME FOUNDATION • STRATEGIC PLAN 2014 – 2018

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STR ØMME FOUNDATION • STRATEGIC PLAN 2014 – 2018

Table of Contents Foreword................................................................................................................................................................................. 3 Introduction.......................................................................................................................................................................... 4 Vision......................................................................................................................................................................................... 4 Mission...................................................................................................................................................................................... 4 Core Values............................................................................................................................................................................. 4 Statement of Strategic Aims and Objectives.................................................................................................... 5 Strategic Role 1: Enhancing the Quality of our Programmes to Address the Root Causes of Poverty................................................................................................................ 5 Strategic Role 2: Influencing Public Opinion and Government Policy

by Raising Awareness on the Issues of Global Poverty and Injustice............................................... 10 Strategic Role 3: Making Available new Funds and Resources for our Programme Operations................................................................................................................................ 10 Strategic Role 4: Running an Efficient and Effective Organisation.................................................... 13 Strømme Foundation Project Countries............................................................................................................ 14

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Foreword Strømme Foundation is a development organisation with an ambitious goal: We want to eradicate poverty!

We are very conscious about the ways in which we contribute towards a world free from poverty.

Strømme Foundation wants to underline Dignity as one of our fundamental values. We do not believe in charity, a centralised organisational model or nurturing a dependency syndrome.

We believe in the very resources inherent in each and every human being, community and nation.

Strømme Foundation wants to have a catalytic function in mobilising local resources through sharing knowledge and creating ideas, and if need be to bring about an incentive to realise ideas and dreams.

Thus we want to build ladders on which people themselves can climb out of poverty; ladders that are made in Mali, Uganda, Bolivia, Bangladesh or elsewhere outside of Norway.

These efforts are not anchored in “kindness” or charity, but they are based on a moral obligation, simply the quest for Justice. There is an obligation between the “duty bearer” and the “rights holder”.

Millions of people are deprived of their basic human rights to food, health and education. It is our moral responsibility to work towards erasing the injustice between “the haves” and the “the have nots”.

In our resource mobilisation efforts in the communities, we will advocate for a more just distribution of resources and power, and we seek to build local bridges between civil society networks and sustainable (Government) structures. We aim at minimising polarisation and encouraging common efforts both within and between local communities.

Strømme Foundation wants to give a voice to the voiceless both through our words and our actions.

There is a cry for Solidarity with those who are marginalised and discriminated against. Marginalisation, discrimination and corruption are amongst the root causes of poverty, and solidarity with these vulnerable groups is vital in order to empower and include them in the development process.

Based on our core values –Dignity, Justice and Solidarity –, we strive to leave lasting ‘footprints’ in all the contexts in which we are present.

Øyvind Aadland Secretary General Strømme Foundation

Kristiansand, 09.10.13

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Introduction Strømme Foundation (SF) was founded in 1976 as the result of the commitment of former Reverend Olav Kristian Strømme, to raise funds for people in need. Today, SF has become one of Norway’s major non-governmental development organisations.

SF’s identity is based on Christian values emanating from the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. Thus, SF, inspired by the Christian view of God´s creation and absolute dignity of man, strives to approach people with openness and respect, regardless of religion, ethnicity, caste, gender, disability or other minority status. With a deep respect for human dignity and a conviction of the value of equitable partnership, SF works to empower the poor to take charge of their own lives and communities.

Vision:

A world free from poverty

SF intervenes through the sectors of education and microfinance. Whereas education helps people develop the attitudes, skills and knowledge needed to make informed decisions for the development of themselves and their communities, microfinance creates access to sustainable income sources and provides a means by which the poor can act upon these decisions. It is our firm conviction that, when combined, education and microfinance can enable our target group to hold duty bearers accountable for the realisation of their rights to a greater extent than is possible through isolated education or microfinance interventions alone.

Mission:

To eradicate poverty

Core Values:

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Dignity

We believe in the inherent, inalienable rights of every person. To SF, this is the most important human right from which all other fundamental human rights derive

Justice

We have a drive to fulfil not only legal, but also social rights of communities and individuals, in creating a more just distribution of society’s resources and power

Solidarity

We empathically identify ourselves with the plight of marginalised and discriminated groups.

STR ØMME FOUNDATION • STRATEGIC PLAN 2014 – 2018

Statement of Strategic Aims and Objectives The context with regard to the needs of our stakeholders, including the poor people we work for, our Regional Offices, our donors and other stakeholders – is in many ways different now than it was in 2009, when our last Strategic Plan (SP) was deve-loped. Furthermore, the organisation has learned significantly from the implementation of the last SP (2009 – 2013). These factors have shaped our new strategy.

Our main goal for this strategic plan period is to strengthen the organisation’s contribution to bringing people out of poverty in a lasting way. We believe we can make the most impact by: 1) Enhancing the quality of our programmes to address the root causes of poverty 2) Influencing public opinion and government policy by raising awareness on the issues of global poverty and injustice 3) Making available long-term funds and resources for our programme operations 4) Running an efficient and effective organisation

Strategic Role 1: Enhancing the Quality of our Programmes to Address the Root Causes of Poverty In an attempt to supplement the efforts of the governments in poverty eradication, SF wishes to play a catalytic role in creating enabling conditions and in designing practical development solutions that change unjust and unequal power relations in favour of the poor and marginalised.

To ensure sustainability, SF, through interaction with civil society, seeks to anchor our programmes with the Governments in our respective countries of operation. Our target groups are primarily women, children and youth; people who live in poverty and/ or injustice and who therefore do not have their rights met.

SF believes that sustainable development can better be achieved when we collaborate with other NGOs and actors working in the same geographical and/or thematic areas as SF. We hence strive for cross-fertilisation and collaboration with similar actors wherever possible.

SF’s Development Policy explains our development approach in more detail.

1) Mode of Operation

SF’s mode of operation is unique in our combination of a decentralised structure and our partnership model, which ensures that the solutions to poverty are locally defined and always tailored to the local context.

Decentralisation SF has deliberately adapted a decentralised structure as a conscious attempt to bring the voice of the global South into the decision making process of our organisation. SF’s development work is anchored in our Regional Offices located in South America (Lima), West Africa (Bamako), East Africa (Kampala) and Asia (Colombo). With a coordinating, capacity building and fundraising office in Kristiansand, Norway, these regional offices, which are all run and managed by nationals from the respective regions, oversee the implementation of SF’s programmes in 14 intervention countries: Peru, Bolivia, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Uganda, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, Kenya, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal and Myanmar (Burma).

Furthermore, while all four Regional Directors, together with the three Directors at the Head office, constitute part of SF’s collective Leadership team under the Secretary General, one member from the SF’s Board of Directors is always from the global South.

Parnership Model One of SF’s competitive advantages is our partnership model.

SF is not an operational NGO but only works through local implementing partner organisations in our intervention countries. Although this may be a demanding structure, we believe it ensures a cost effective, culturally sensitive and contextually appropriate approach to development. When problems and solutions are locally defined, we believe there will be better, longer-term results for our target groups. This approach will also ensure that acquired competency stays in the communities in the respective regions.

SF’s implementing partners are selected based on some common criteria. Among the most important selection criteria are a partner’s compatibility with SF’s vision and values; their connection and added value to the various systems, structures and networks in their respective communities; potential for replicability / scaling up and funding; innovative capacity; advocacy towards both the public and private sector as well as strategic partners, and compliance to the principles of transparency, good governance and zero tolerance to corruption.

As a result of lessons learned in the previous five-year period, and in order to strengthen geographical focus and the cost effectiveness of our operations, SF has reduced the number of partners in each region. Based on our partner selection criteria we have endeavoured to identify partners with greater outreach potential; these will achieve more results, be easier to monitor, benefit more from our targeted capacity building, and significantly reduce administrative costs. Moreover, we are now going to emphasise more long-term partnerships that last, preferably, for the entire duration of the Strategic Plan period.

SF places emphasis on strengthening the value added relationship between the implementing partners and the regional offices. This is done through a greater emphasis on capacity building of implementing partner organisations, so that they become more effective contributors to creating lasting change in their communities. We aim to increasingly support partners in developing sound policies, conducting effective advocacy, strengthening organisational structures and effective

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methods of management and control. SF is also increasingly pursuing arenas for two-way communication between partners and regional offices. Our partnerships are premised upon active processes of participation, whereby needs, processes and action plans are locally defined and developed in close collaboration with the partner and communities in question.

2) Rights Based Approach

SF pursues a strengthened rights-based approach in all our programmes. Over the years, we have increasingly realised that we create more impact when we actively work to fight the root causes of poverty and help the poor have their inherent legal and social rights fulfilled, than when we treat the symptoms of poverty through projects designed solely to cater for the needs of the poor.

SF understands rights-based development as a locally owned participatory process of empowerment, in which rights-holders actively claim their rights from the respective duty bearers. In the course of this empowerment process, rights-holders gain increased control over their lives and the unequal power relations which keep rights-holders from realising their rights are contested. Development is achieved when people’s rights are respected, promoted and realised – by those who are responsible for it.

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SF’s development approach is based on the fundamental principle that all people are equal in dignity. In our interventions, we shall uphold the following six principles: participation, mobilisation, empowerment, accountability, transparency and non-discrimination.

In accordance with our strengthened rights-based approach, SF will make increasing effort to address the root causes of poverty. Our interventions will thus strive to not only ‘teach people how to fish’, but also how to ‘fish’ sustainably. This implies that we will work increasingly towards creating long-lasting impact that is able to be sustained for the target group even when SF withdraws from a given area. Accordingly, SF views development as a process which enables people to realise their potential, builds self-confidence and enables people to lead lives of dignity and fulfilment.

We wish to concentrate more on advocacy and capacity building and less on the mere delivery of services, in our efforts to achieve sustainable development for the poor. To SF, sustainable development can only happen when rights holders are capacitated to hold duty bearers accountable in the long term, and when duty bearers improve their ability to fulfil their obligations and responsibilities. Thus, working on both sides of the equation; i.e. with both rights-holders and duty-bearers, is crucial to secure long-term impact. SF therefore seeks to involve and build the capacity of duty bearers to the greatest extent possible during the implementation of our programmes.

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begins from birth. In all SF’s education work, whether formal or non-formal, SF will work to improve access to and retention in an education of quality that takes place in an enabling learning environment. Interventions will largely be within early childhood education, basic (primary) education, vocational training, adult literacy and life skills training. b) Enhance Access to Sustainable Income Sources (cf. SF’s Microfinance Strategy) SF wishes to enhance poor people’s access to sustainable i ncome sources on several fronts, as this plays a key role in bringing people out of economic and abject poverty. This includes promoting access to financial services through supporting microfinance (MF) institutions and promoting community-based microfinance, particularly in rural areas.

SF focuses on strengthening the linkages between these two forms of microfinance so that savings groups become a gateway to more formal credit sources. We also emphasise capacity building and skills development as part of our MF interventions, and aim to link potential entrepreneurs – particularly youth – to SF’s educational programmes, especially vocational training. Thus, SF engages in job creation through enabling loan takers to find dignified employment. SF also increasingly aims to strengthen our target groups’ negotiation power vis-à-vis suppliers and/or buyers, support value chain development efforts and the introduction of appropriate technologies that can increase the diversity, sustainability and productivity of income generating activities and of local economies as a whole.

3) Thematic Focus

SF’s work in four very different regions, some of which also show great country variations, necessitates a holistic approach to programmes that takes local context and needs as the starting point. This means that interventions will be varied, as regions and intervention countries are diverse. As a result, SF has developed many relevant concepts which crucially respond to local needs. SF does however, to the greatest extent possible, pursue cross-regional fertilisation in our work, and we increasingly strive to adapt successful programmes to other regional contexts where relevant. 1 SF’s thematic goals all pertain to the wider sectors of Education or Microfinance. More specifically, we aim to: a) Ensure Quality Education for Disadvantaged Groups b) Enhance Access to Sustainable Income Sources c) Strengthen Public Sector and Civil Society, and d) Strengthen Social Protection for Children and Adolescents Living in Violent Environments a) Ensure Quality Education for Disadvantaged Groups (cf. SF’s Education Strategy) To SF, education is both valuable in itself and decisive for promoting economic growth, social change and sustainable development. Moreover, education fosters the creation of free, critical and creative global citizens. SF has a holistic view of education; we believe the right to education is life long and

c) Strengthen Public Sector and Civil Society (cf. SF’s Civil Society Strategy) A strong civil society is fundamental for ensuring that the poor and marginalised have their own channels for expressing their interests and advocating for their rights. SF aims to safeguard people from exploitation and deprivation of their rights by creating an environment in which they are empowered to support themselves, resist external threats and actively claim their rights for durable changes in their lives. SF does not wish to create dependency, but works to prepare the community to take control of their lives in deciding what is best for them, having realised their inherent strength, i.e. their potential for collective action. SF will work to strengthen civil society both through working with the target group directly and through building the capacity of implementing partner organisations, who are part of the civil society. In line with our rights-based approach, SF also works closely with the State and aims to strengthen the ability of the public sector to cater for a more active civil society, through promoting improved accountability and transparency tools and more participatory planning processes. d) Strengthen Social Protection for Children and Adolescents Living in Violent Environments (cf. SF’s Social Protection Strategy) SF believes that our poverty eradication mission cannot be achieved unless and until children, those who are usually in most frequent denial of their rights in our intervention countries, are able to realise their human right to protection from violence and harm. SF therefore works to minimise social risks and create enabling conditions for children and adolescents living in violent environments, so that they can

1 In the last Strategic Plan period, SF had great success with adapting the Shonglap program, that started in Bangladesh, to Nepal and East Africa. We wish to continue with such cross-regional fertilisation.

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become empowered agents of change. In SF’s work with social protection, we focus on advocating for improved government services in child care and risk prevention, and on building the capacity of both rights holders and duty bearers to minimise risk. To this end, we also work to equip children at risk and/or their parents or guardians with formal and non-formal education opportunities to strengthen their resilience, selfdependence and livelihood opportunities through the provision of skills and vocational training.

In addition to the four thematic goals above, SF also acknow- ledges the importance of preserving local culture to promote sustainable development. To this end, SF, together with the Vest-Agder County Council, has established the Mimeta centre for Culture Sector Development and Arts Cooperation that works in more than 20 countries. 2

4) Cross Cutting Issues

In our development work, the following SF-wide cross-cutting issues will be mainstreamed into all programmes: • Gender Equality. Girls and women usually experience the worst forms of poverty and injustice, and SF wishes to promote equal rights and opportunities both for women and men to share in the socio-political and economic order.

• Environmental Sustainability. Climate change and other environmental damage poses a great threat to the livelihoods of our rights-holders and future generations. SF increasingly seeks to mainstream environmental awareness, climate change mitigation and adaptation into existing programmes.

Inclusion. SF promotes the inclusion, non-discrimination and empowerment of marginalised groups, including people marginalised by disability, ethnicity, caste and other minority statuses.

Regions may also adopt other cross-cutting issues in line with other important issues that are considered crucial in a given region (e.g. HIV/AIDS in East Africa, peace & reconciliation in Asia and food security in West Africa).

5) Relief

SF is a long-term development organisation. As such, SF is not normally involved in relief and rehabilitation work. However, in extraordinary situations when natural disasters or other emergencies occur in areas where SF’s partners are working, SF can – where this provides an added value to our target group – consider assisting partner organisations to undertake relief and rehabilitation work with funds secured from various sources.

to summarise lessons learned and to inform any decision about continuation or areas requiring follow-up. Thus, SF’s PM&E system serves three main purposes: to strengthen accountability, contribute to decision-making and promote organisational learning. SF strives for participatory planning and monitoring, in which the stakeholders targeted by our interventions participate in decision-making about the types, frequency and contents of monitoring. SF uses the international Results-Based Management Approach with its accompanying Logical Framework Approach, and the Social Performance Management Approach, aligned with international standards for microfinance.

7) Exit Strategy

SF believes that our ‘catalytic function’ is inherently temporary; thus, ultimately the people and implementing partners should assume and take control of running the programmes for and by themselves. SF expects our partner organisations to have a built-in exit strategy at the time of planning together with the target groups. Accordingly, our phasing out strategy is conceptualised at two levels; the community level and the implementing partner level.

At the community level, SF will phase out when the sustained interventions have achieved the desired outcomes and impact, or when the community has developed adequate mechanisms for ensuring the sustainability of the programme in the future.

SF’s empowerment of the community through rights-based programming, our establishment of linkages with permanent government institutions (including capacitating such institutions) and our facilitation of networking with other key stakeholders are crucial elements in this regard.

At the implementing partner level, SF will phase out when the partner has acquired the requisite capacity and competence that enables it to achieve its mission on its own or together with other donors or strategic partners. However, having invested in building the capacity and competence of a partner organisation, SF can challenge partners that have completed their mission in a given community to focus on new areas, or to share their competence with other partner organisations of SF. Thus, the acquired capacity and competence of one partner can be made available to other communities or partners.

SF has zero tolerance for corruption and will withdraw from partnership with a given partner if funds are misused (cf. Sf’s Anti- Fraud and Corruption Policy). SF will also sever partnership with a partner organisation if our agreements with them are consistently violated. This includes unacceptable audits, poor governance and the discrimination against and / or sexual harassment of women, children and marginalised communities, and / or violations of SF’s Child Protection Policy and / or Ethical Guidelines.

6) Results Based Management

In all SF’s operations, the measurement and documentation of the results of our programmes among the people and communities we serve is a central goal. To assure quality in SF’s programmes, SF places significant emphasis on our planning, monitoring and evaluation (PM&E) system. To ensure efficiency, monitoring information is designed to meet the needs of decision-making at different levels of the organisation.

Evaluation during all programme phases is undertaken in order

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2 www.mimeta.org

STR ØMME FOUNDATION • STRATEGIC PLAN 2014 – 2018

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Strategic Role 2: Influencing Public Opinion and Government Policy by Raising Awareness on the Issues of Global Poverty and Injustice SF acknowledges the interconnectedness of our world and believes that the root causes of global poverty and injustice call for a global solution. As some of the root causes of global poverty lie in the global North, they are beyond the scope of the Global South. Consequently, it is becoming increasingly important to mobilise individuals, communities and Governments for more solidarity with the poor and marginalised.

Identifying with the plight of the poor and acting upon our common challenges in solidarity with the global South is intrinsically linked to having an informed public in the global North that is aware of how they can play a part in poverty eradication. SF is convinced that having an informed public is the most effective way to hold the Governments in the global North accountable and conscious about the challenges faced by our target groups. This is an important goal in itself, although it is also related to fundraising for our programme operations.

Both in Norway and in our programme countries, SF aims at informing and actively involving the public in effective joint action towards poverty eradication. We aim to contribute to agenda setting and public involvement through school visits, through our own communication channels and through awareness raising of important issues in the media, etc.

SF also seeks to strengthen the civil society by facilitating our partner networks to influence dury, bearers and shape government policy through advocacy. Building the capacity of partner organisations to undertake such advocacy in our intervention countries is therefore a crucial component of SF’s work.

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Moreover, SF also seeks to conduct direct advocacy in Norway and internationally for poverty eradication. To this end SF seeks to maintain and reinforce our role in thematic and strategic networks that will strengthen our joint potential for advocacy. To facilitate our advocacy work, SF will work through our networks to link our programmes with research institutions to document results and identify best practices for dissemination and programme improvement.

Strategic Role 3: Making Available new Funds and Resources for our Programme Operations A clear lesson learned from the previous five-year period is the lack of a well-thought through plan for fundraising to facilitate effective programme implementation. This fact is further complicated by perhaps the most challenging issues in the development field; the difficult balance between development being very much a long term process and the fact that funding for this process is intermittent and at best short term.

The focus of SF’s fundraising efforts is on making available new funds and resources for our programme operations. To the greatest extent possible, SF seeks to raise funds that will increasingly facilitate a move from implementing isolated projects to a more integrated and long-term programme approach. This necessarily demands a thorough integration of funding in programming work, and vice versa.

The previous five-year period has taught SF that funding and programme interventions are inherently intertwined. We therefore endeavour to strengthen the communication and collaboration between all parts and levels of the organisation, in order to achieve a good balance between fundraising and

STR ØMME FOUNDATION • STRATEGIC PLAN 2014 – 2018

programme operations. Indeed, we acknowledge that good donors cannot be taken for granted, so in developing programmes a central criterion has been their marketing potential.

When programmes have been developed, SF will strive to increasingly market our long-term programmes and seek to access funding sources that offer predictability for as long as possible. These processes will allow SF to be donor relevant without being donor driven, and to serve both our rights-holders and our donors in a professional manner.

SF’s fundraising efforts take place on the following four arenas: The private market in Norway The public sector in Norway The institutional market Raising loan capital for Microfinance

1) Private Market Norway

The competition in the private market is increasingly becoming tougher. SF is competing with large, international organisations that spend a lot of money on marketing. At the same time, smaller, private initiatives are increasingly flourishing based on personal experiences and promises that none of their donations are used for administrative purposes. Moreover, these “Mongos” (My Own NGOs) often have a strong personal commitment to the cause, which makes them a strong competitor in the donor market.

SF’s main challenge in the private market has been the loss of donors over time. In this five-year period, SF has developed various strategies intended to reverse this trend.

Individual Donors SF recognises that we could not be where we are today without a large group of individual donors and supporters who loyally give to un-earmarked programmes and allow us to use this money flexibly. SF is one of the few development NGOs in Norway that gains a greater share of its funds from individual donors than from the public sector. As the Norwegian fixed term donor market has generally grown in the last few years, SF strives to increase our number of predictable fixed term donors, as we are convinced that this will make our funding situation more robust in the long run.

In order to maintain and increase our number of current individual donors, we will intensify our investments in donor fundraising, particularly on the campaign front. Following the good experiences with the Job Creator campaign in Kristiansand in September 2013, SF aims to host similar campaigns in different cities. SF believes the factor of success will be the combination of volunteers from the community and a paid marketing campaign, and we will challenge community leaders and opinion shapers to invite their network to join the team of volunteers. We believe it will be inspiring for resourceful people to be able to contribute to poverty eradication beyond «simply» donating money, and instead donating time, ideas and commitment.

SF also seeks to participate in other nation-wide campaigns that will significantly strengthen SF’s branding and income.

SF also wishes to be clearer in communicating the possibilities related to testamentary donations.

Major Donor Groups With regard to SF’s major donor groups such as the corporate sector, schools etc., SF focuses on maintaining today’s portfolio size of partners and activities. This is a challenge in itself, as some of our partners are big, important companies that it will be very demanding to replace if lost. We aim to increase our brand awareness and be a chosen partner for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) work, particularly in the South West of Norway. We also aim to further consolidate our long-term partnerships with the corporate sector, in line with our long-term programming approach. Ultimately, we aim to profit from the continued growth in our contact network through an increase in revenue from our collaboration with the corporate sector.

Communication Messages in Norway In our communication efforts, SF will highlight the ways in which we are unique amongst other development actors.

This includes emphasising our local contribution and decentralised mode of operation that makes programmes ‘made in Bangladesh’ or ‘made in Mali’; our competency in education, microfinance, and more importantly on their synergies; and our expertise in promoting help for self-help. More specifically, we will underline the potential of our two intervention sectors to lead to job creation, a concept that is high in demand in the Global South and that donors can easily relate to. We also aim to show, through a strong emphasis on results, that we offer good ‘value for money’ and that our way of creating lasting impact for the poor is cost effective.

We will continue to use our position in Kristiansand, as the biggest international NGO outside of Oslo, to our advantage in the private donor market. Furthermore, we will strive to be clearer and more united when communicating our Christian identity, as we believe this will positively define us in a competitive setting.

2) The Public Sector in Norway

The pillar of SF’s public sector funding is our agreement with NORAD, which provides a large percentage of the organisation’s total funding. The NORAD agreement is strategic not only because of the funding provided, which offers predictability and allows for long-term planning, but most importantly because of the dialogue and quality assurance that accompanies it. SF therefore places great emphasis on continuing to build a good relationship with NORAD. A new approach in this period is a concerted effort to access funding directly from the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA). We believe our operational mode and organisational structure provide a good infrastructure for the Norwegian government to channel their resources to the poor.

SF therefore aims to better position ourselves with, and make our programmes known to, the MFA. This implies taking a more active role in direct lobbying toward the MFA and toward Norwegian embassies in our intervention countries.

It also implies increasing our visibility in Norway through participation in meetings, seminars, workshops, conferences and thematic networks with like-minded organisations. We consider this a worthwhile investment given our location in Kristiansand, somewhat far removed from Oslo where most development organisations are located.

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3) The Institutional Market

Institutional grants provide a steadily increasing source of funding for our programme operations. SF continues to pursue and establish strategic alliances with like-minded organisations in Scandinavia, Europe and internationally, in order to strengthen programme impact and expand funding opportunities. We will continue to place great emphasis on our membership in the EU-CORD3 network, through which many strategic alliances with Scandinavian and European organisations have been established and through which professional dialogue, joint implementation and fundraising potential is strengthened.

SF also seeks to increasingly link up with big NGOs through consortia, in order to specifically target bilateral and multilateral funding agencies such as USAID, UNICEF, World Bank and big Foundations. To this end, we aim to increasingly participate in internationally recognised conferences related to education and microfinance. Where possible, we also aim to commission independent ‘impact studies’ of our successful programmes to prove their long-term and sustainable impact on the communities we support. SF also strives to link up with international research centres to better measure and publicise results.

In order to maximise our chances of accessing and receiving institutional funds, SF will engage in the continuous task of advocacy and lobbying to the main institutional donors and their respective governments on the relevance of our structures, mode of operation and our proven programmes.

As there is a great preference for institutional donors to fund innovative approaches, SF will highlight the unique programmes for which we are known. Moreover, where it adds value and strengthens the impact of our programmes, we will further promote innovative approaches in our intervention countries in order to increase our funding potential.

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Finally, SF aims to strengthen the capacity of our Regional Offices to engage in local resource mobilisation themselves.

This is proving to be increasingly important, as the economic crisis in traditional donor countries has resulted in budget cuts for development assistance, and non-traditional donor countries and new multinational businesses in the aid architecture have emerged. With the increasing preference of donors for local applicants in IF applications, SF will take advantage of our decentralised structure in order to benefit from this new trend.

Particularly in the middle income countries in which we operate, SF will strengthen our local resource mobilisation strategies, in order to tap into the increasingly growing economy in these countries.

4) Raising Loan Capital for Microfinance

With regard to our microfinance operations, SF will strengthen our efforts to secure funding from social investors from both the private and public sectors. This involves creating linkages with different commercial banks and national microfinance entities across Europe and internationally in search for social investment in microfinance. Through GAVN Microfinance AS, SF will give Norwegian investors a platform for social investments in microfinance. Particular emphasis will be on finding investors for capacity building and skills development, in particular of youth, so that they can find employment.

3 European Christian Organisations in Relief and Development

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Strategic Role 4: Running an Efficient and Effective Organisation In order to effectively implement SF’s Strategic Plan and maximise the impact on our target groups, SF must run an efficient and effective organisation, which entails having a well-planned organisational structure and a well-integrated risk analysis.

Organisational Structure SF has a decentralised organisational structure. The Secretary General (SG) is the overall leader responsible for managing SF worldwide. SG has the responsibility to operationalise SF’s Strategic Plan, in collaboration with the Leadership Team, based on policies and principles, all of which are approved by SF’s Board of Directors. The SG reports to the Board of Directors.

SF’s organisational structure can be illustrated in the following way:

SF believes all parts of our organisation will be strengthened through an emphasis on communication, collaboration and capacity building. We have developed various measures that will facilitate communication and increased collaboration between regions and departments at the Kristiansand office. Moreover, SF has good experience with the Desk Officer function as ‘service desk’ and communication coordinator’ for each region at the Kristiansand office, which strengthens the value added relationship between the coordinating and facilitating office in Kristiansand and the Regional Offices.

With regard to capacity building, SF strives for a greater focus on this at each level – at the target group level, partner level, Regional Office level, and at the Kristiansand Office level, in order to strengthen our ability to work effectively in a global team to promote the rights of the poor and marginalised.

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Strømme Foundation Project Countries

MALI BURKINA FASO

PERU

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BOLIVIA

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NEPAL BANGLADESH

NIGER SUDAN

MYANMAR

SOUTH SUDAN UGANDA

SRI LANKA KENYA TANZANIA

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A world without poverty

Strømme Foundation is a Norway-based international NGO with a rights-based approach and the vision of a world free from poverty. Through local partner organisations in the South, we work with education and microfinance to help provide the ladders out of poverty. But it is the poor themselves who have to climb.

Skippergaten 3/5 • Box 414 • N-4664 Kristiansand Norway Tel +47 38 12 75 00 • Fax +47 38 02 57 10 • Org. no 952 002 139 E-mail: postkrs@stromme.org • www.stromme.org www.strommestiftelsen.no