Firelight Foundation

OVERVIEW: The Firelight Foundation supports organizations whose work centers on improving the health, education, resilience, and livelihoods of children in select African countries.

IP TAKE: This funder only supports “organizations that are born and raised in African communities,” so U.S.-based organizations and NGOs should look elsewhere for funding. Nevertheless, it welcomes communication from community organizations in Malawi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia or Kenya, and invites all nonprofits to register for email updates about future funding and collaboration opportunities. While there may not be immediate opportunity here, this is a trailblazing funder in Africa and a good one to watch.

PROFILE: Based in Santa Cruz, California, the Firelight Foundation was established in 1999 by software engineer Dave Katz and his wife, Kerry Olson. Its mission is to “build the capacity of catalytic community-based organizations that are working with their communities to realize smart, sustainable, and potentially scalable community-driven solutions to the challenges faced by children and youth in eastern and southern Africa.” It identifies, supports, and seeks to strengthen community-based organizations that address issues like “poverty, HIV and AIDS, child marriage, poor quality education, poor nutrition, lack of health care, and more.” In contrast to other foundations investing in Africa, which tend to fund established NGOs, Firelight often prioritizes funding grassroots groups in Lesotho, Malawi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. The foundation also makes grants to community-based groups in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Uganda. While the foundation previously prioritized HIV and AIDS work, its current impact clusters focus on early childhood development, primary education, girls’ secondary education, child marriage, empowering girls and children’s rights.

Grants for Women, Girls and Global Development

The Firelight Foundation supports the rights and empowerment of African women and girls through several of its impact areas. In Malawi, the foundation is committed to Improving Girls’ Access to Secondary Education by funding organizations that “respond to the challenge of girls’ education with a multifaceted approach that looks at the community and family circumstances that prevent girls from reaching their full potential.” It supports work such as entrepreneurship training, social funds, community engagement, and workforce development by helping partners engage in “human-centered design training and application” to address “root causes of low transition, persistence, and pass rate for girls in secondary school.” 

Firelight’s grants for Ending Child Marriage operates mainly in the Shinyanga region of Tanzania to address not only child abuse factors, but also the “limited educational and economic outcomes” leading to a cycle of poverty. It supports a number of organizations with a wide range of approaches to combat child marriage, including “economic strengthening,” psychological support, vocational support, education, parenting assistance, awareness campaigns, law enforcement intervention, and advocacy for children’s rights.

Firelight also works towards Empowering Adolescent Girls in Rwanda where women suffer from “low literacy rates, low secondary school completion rate, high rates of domestic violence, and lower earnings and economic opportunities than men.” The foundation partners that focus on economic empowerment, providing services such as “vocational training, financial and business management, start-up loans, and sustainable farming for the young women in their communities.” Firelight’s partners also tend to address reproductive and sexual health education, especially regarding unplanned pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases like HIV.

Beyond its grantmaking for women and girls, the Firelight Foundation’s grants for global development primarily center around education. In Malawi, Tanzania, and Zambia it supports Early Childhood Development Systems that promote “high-quality early childhood development (ECD) programs, greater social support to parents and/or children, and higher educational or language stimulation in the home.” The foundation supports local, community-based ECD programs that work towards “building basic infrastructure, creating supportive learning environments, and training ECD caregivers,” as well as related efforts such as financial services to empower families, childhood nutrition services and education, HIV testing and counseling, and fundraising “income-generating activities” to support ECD centers. Firelight provides both support funding and organizational knowledge to build the capacity of these community-based efforts.

The Firelight Foundation also awards grants for Strengthening Primary Education in Tanzania, where the government's initiative to provide “fee-free” nationwide primary education has left many schools underfunded. The foundation supports organizations that take a “holistic and innovative approach to address key challenges that limit children’s success in school,” with a wide range of strategies, including community-involvement, teacher training in “child-friendly pedagogy,” after school learning, remedial classes, and home tutoring. Firelight generally offers “organizational capacity building and tailored technical capacity building” to improve how organizations measure and evaluate their impact. Firelight’s partners in Tanzania include the Tanzania Home Economics Association, HakiElimu, and Safina Women’s Association. 

Grants for Global Health and Diseases

Firelight takes a broad approach toward philanthropy. It invests in a variety of areas including nutrition and education. While its global health strategy remains less clear, Firelight prioritizes preventive care and treatment for HIV/AIDS. The foundation’s grants for Upholding the Rights of Vulnerable Children are primarily aimed at children that have been “orphaned and left even more vulnerable to HIV and AIDS, child abuse, malnutrition, and poverty.” Working mainly in Lesotho, it funds general operating support and capacity building efforts for organizations that serve as “the first point of psychosocial support in communities devastated by HIV, a training platform in income-generating activities for families, and a referral point to external social services.” Some of these grantees include Lesotho Child Counselling Center, Nazareth Support Group, Lefikeng Disable and Social Training Center and Lesotho Society of Mentally Handicapped Persons.

Important Grant Details:

Firelight is not transparent about its grantees awards, but tax filings reveal that grants generally range from $10,000 to $100,000. The foundation only operates in a select few countries in East and Southern Africa—namely Malawi, Tanzania, Zambia, Rwanda, and Lesotho. Grantseekers may review the foundation’s Grantee Map for more information about its grantmaking habits.

The Firelight Foundation is not actively seeking proposals, but grantseekers may contact the foundation with general inquiries.

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