A Few Questions!

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Permalink Reply by Claire Charamnac on February 13, 2012 at 8:02pm

Hi Genny,

Great questions!

We are committed to consensus decision-making that engages our partners and stakeholders as we strongly believe that strategic decisions can only result from inclusive processes. We currently have a multi-level decision-making process that incorporates community focus-groups, stakeholder consultations, research culled from reports and best-practices, and extensive staff brainstorming sessions.

 We conduct focus-groups with participants and hold extensive consultations with a wide range of stakeholders including parents, educators, community leaders, women's activists and leading entrepreneurs. Using this information and research from youth and women associations, we engage in regular strategic dialogue with our staff, board, and advisers. We dialogue with our staff and interns to brainstorm options and bring in a variety of opinions and view-points, employing consensus-building to promote ownership.

There are rotating seats reserved on the Sub-Committee of our Board of Directors for our two Fellows (program alumni selected to receive a 10 month stipend and mentoring) who draw on their experiences to make recommendations and evaluate our curriculum, programs and direction from a youth-perspective.

Through feedback from the program alumni, the involvement of interns (all program alumni) and one-year rotating board appointments for fellows, we are working to integrate the ideas and values of our beneficiaries into the organization. The renewed focus on community-driven programming contributes to achieving our commitment to a multi-faceted, youth-led approach to social change and leadership.

Our goals for 2012:

I. Overall Objective: To intensively train 30 exceptional girls in our year-long LEAD program, with each girl directly impacting 25 other girls in her school or community through one of the three programs, impacting 780 youth in total.

 

II. Program Objectives: To launch a mentoring program, pairing each of the 30 participants with a Nepali female mentor, to enhance our LEAD program by facilitating individualized guidance. To expand the Social Entrepreneurship program- to sustain the existing ventures and see two new teams of 4-5 participants launch social ventures that impact 200 people. We aim to form 15 new partnerships to multiply our impact and expand opportunities for our participants.

 

III. Organizational Growth Objectives: To secure mid-term funding (over the next 1 to 3 years) through one to two main funding sources (small foundations or NGOs) and to fulfill our current annual budget of $61 000.

Goals for 2015 onwards:

Our current output is 30 girls trained annually in the LEAD program, with each girl directly impacting 25 other girls through one of the three programs (780 per year total). By 2017, we will have trained 400 girls (60 per year starting in 2013) and impacted 10,400.