E4A launches the advocacy seed grant in Kenya & Nigeria

We have walked the journey for many years with grassroots advocates in Kenya and Nigeria. This year, we have made a seed grant available to position advocates at the core of implementation as they lead local advocacy towards survival of mothers and babies in their geographies and beyond.

Over the years, support provided by E4A-MamaYe technical experts focused on building capacity of organizations in effective Maternal & Newborn Health (MNH) advocacy. Learning from what we had seen working in Nigeria through the State Led Accountability Mechanisms (SLAMs), grassroots organizations in Kenya formally came together to form coalitions.

Using the Transformation Pathway Model

In preparation for take-off, to ensure sustainability for the work of the SLAMs and coalitions, our technical assistance was designed to follow a transformation pathway. This model staggered the growth of these organizations across different stages namely, emergence, formation, coalescence, institutionalization, and finally transformation. The organizations developed milestones against each stage for six domains categorized under governance structure, resourcing, data use, Political Economy Analysis, and Gender Transformative Advocacy.

“The Global Public Goods developed by our team continued to provide useful resources and materials for the SLAMs and coalitions to strengthen how they do advocacy- including gender transformative advocacy, evaluate their coalitions using guide to coalition building ensuring more inclusivity and promoting principles of equal participation among men and women.”

Helen Ekpo, the Senior Transformation and Sustainability Advisor, E4A-MamaYe Nigeria team.

The Seed Grant Phase

As our technical experts continue to provide assistance to the organizations as they make progress against their transformation pathway, we have launched a 8 months seed grant. We have made available GBP 6000 per coalition/SLAM to support them to advance their gender transformative advocacy initiatives to hold governments in their geographies to account for MNH commitments.

“As they advocate for more domestic investment and expenditure in MNH in their respective geographies, it is anticipated that such investments will go a long way to save the lives of mothers and babies.”

George Ogola, the Sustainability & Local Ownership Advisor, E4A-MamaYe Kenya team.

As these organizations use the funds to implement advocacy initiatives, our team will capacity build them to have strong financial systems and management practices. Our call is that donors would partner with them to further locally driven advocacy engagements with local governments to increase and sustain domestic investments for saving lives of mothers and babies.

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