The Art of Making a Difference

Sasha Fisher ’10 (right) has a keen sense for turning raw material into something meaningful and enduring. As a UVM undergraduate with a self-designed double major in human security and studio art, Fisher spent much of her time painting and building sculptures—and studying how to create a world in which people everywhere can meet their basic needs and live with dignity. Today, as the executive director and co-founder of Spark Microgrants, a non profit organization that enables communities to launch self-designed social impact projects, she is providing the resources to help those facing poverty sculpt a better future for themselves.

Fisher’s novel approach to community driven development was inspired by her work as a student with the New Sudan Education Initiative, and an eye-opening trip to South Sudan in her junior year.

“I got to see first-hand some of the challenges embedded in historical foreign aid, which reinforces colonial models of command and control. I saw a lot of money pouring into South Sudan but not a lot of that money being controlled by South Sudanese, who had just fought for over two decades to gain independence and to have control over their own future.”

She had gone on the trip to help build schools for girls, which she says seemed like an obvious way to provide better access to education. But she arrived to find several school buildings sitting empty, even in a region with some of the lowest education rates in the world. Asked why, families responded that the schools had been built by outsiders. It became clear to Fisher that well-intentioned development programs often fail to ask communities what they need or give them the resources to achieve it themselves. Frustrated by this, Fisher wanted to see if there was a better approach.

Wasting no time after graduation, and equipped with both the knowledge from her self-designed major in human security and the practical know-how to apply it, she co-founded Spark Microgrants. Her mission was to enable the world’s most under-resourced populations to take local action toward local goals, like securing access to food, health care, shelter, and clean water. With modest initial funding in hand, she moved to Africa and began testing a small grants program.

“We started Spark because, all too often, communities facing poverty sit on the sidelines of the change initiatives that are meant to uplift them,” says Fisher. “I went to Rwanda with a oneway ticket and ten thousand dollars. I had never been to Rwanda before. I wanted to go somewhere where I would not feel like an expert in what was happening and therefore would have to delegate decision-making power to community members.”

The model is simple but also groundbreaking. Spark offers a small seed grant (currently $8,000) and supports community members in identifying their goals and drafting a proposal for a sustainable project to achieve them. Community members—young and old, women and men—sit together, dream together, and develop project ideas together. Focused primarily on East Africa, this unique village action process equips impoverished communities to launch a social enterprise of their own choosing, such as an incomegenerating goat-rearing project, a produce business, or even a school.

One benefit of the model is that communities continue to create change over the long term. According to Fisher, 85 percent of communities continue meeting and taking collective action to improve their communities over time. Families who engage in the process increase productive assets by about 80 percent in the first year.

“At Spark, we believe that every family, every community should have the right to determine their own positive future. We provide the spark, but the community keeps the fire going.”

To date, Spark Microgrants has supported more than 500,000 people in 500 communities across seven African countries. They have achieved a two-fold increase in families eating at least two meals per day.

“It reminds me what hope there is in the generation of young folks all over our world. If we listen to young leaders—if there is space for young leaders to emerge and put their ideas forward—we will have a much more inclusive and supportive world for all.”