With dwindling donor funding due in part from the fallout from Covid-19 pandemic and the current global conflicts, there is the need for widening the donor base, and a paradigm shift in mobilizing development funding and humanitarian assistance for developing countries. This shift calls for a partnership between traditional and new donors.
One group of potential donors often overlooked, is Diasporans who have roots in beneficiary communities. It is a fact that remittances from diasporans to Africa amount to billions of Dollars per year. For example, in 2020, remittances to Ghana alone, exceeded $4.5Bn. It is also, a known truth that most diasporans have strong ties to their native communities through kinship and family ties, and are therefore, willing to contribute to their community’s development efforts. Remittances have been used to support family member’s education, health, funeral contributions and other social activities.
While, some diasporans contribute individually and sometimes, in groups to their community’s development efforts, they face real challenges of lack of transparency , accountability and responsibility in disbursement of funds to outright misappropriation of such funds. The impact of diasporan funding contributions to their own community’s self-determined development programs could be profound if, they could be systematically mobilized and transparently, managed. In order to achieve this impact, these two key issues had to be navigated:
- How could diasporans have control over how their remittances are used?
- Beyond giving to family members, how could diasporan funds be mobilized and channeled towards their community’s self-determined development projects and programs?
Solution: Chango for Development Initiative (CDI)
Chango is derived from the Kiswahili word “Chama” translated as an organization, or a societal welfare group where people agree to a common pool of regular contributions to build resiliency, and to use for mutually, beneficial investments when needed. Chango App is a crowdfunding software that runs on android and Iphones. It was developed, and owned by IT Consortium (A wholly Ghanaian-owned) and leading Ghanaian-based Financial Technology (FinTech) company. IT Consortium (ITC) and Chango App are licensed by the Central Bank of Ghana and have ISO 27001 and PCI-DSS certifications.
CDI brings together Amorrack LLC (International Development Consultancy Firm-Community Development Partner) and ITC (Fintech Partner) to assist donors, diasporans, individuals, groups and beneficiary communities to successfully, identify, prioritize, design, implement and evaluate self-determined development projects and programs through-co-creation, using Chango App as the core platform for mobilizing diasporan and other group funding. Amorrack supports funding groups, donors and beneficiary communities to develop strategies for maximum and sustainable program impact while, ITC provides the technical backstopping for the Chango App.
Benefits of CDI for Social Development:
- Accountability, Transparency and co-creation in development programs/projects
- Diversity, Inclusion and Social Cohesion
- Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) for impact
Ongoing Projects:
Ghana Water Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) Project with current pilots in selected communities in Ashanti and Western Regions. You can contribute to include your community in this project or recommend/Start your own community's social development project HERE.
Upcoming Projects:
- Maternal and Infant Health
- Community Agriculture Information Services
- Informal and Rural Community Pensions
- Agriculture Insurance
- Affordable housing
- Community libraries
- Environmental Conservation Management and Guardianship