Organisation and Systems

Local Systems Strengthening

The Aga Khan Foundation (AKF) partners with more than 1,000 local civil society actors in the health, education and agriculture sectors to improve the quality of life. AKF’s engagement with civil society groups includes organisational assessment and strengthening, facilitating peer exchange, brokering linkages, co-creation and collaborative implementation.

Organisation Strengthening

AKF has developed a collection of tools – from self-administered diagnostics to video-based training – to strengthen CSOs’ organisational capacity in critical areas, including fundraising, communications, and monitoring and evaluation.

Mutual Accountability

AKF aims to establish a structured process for citizen engagement in the education sector. We are supporting the development and strengthening of 358 school boards of trustees as platforms through which citizens will engage to improve school governance and financial oversight, thereby contributing to improving the quality of education for more than 197,000 students. Through participatory training, more than 1,700 trustees (75 percent women) have become important actors in steering discussions between administrators, parents, students, teachers and local government authorities around the development priorities of their schools. Through the adoption of accountability mechanisms, trustees are also openly reporting on the progress made in the implementation of those priorities, helping them to emerge as central actors in school development. A recent assessment shows that 85 percent of parents/students report that the planning/budgeting and monitoring/ feedback channels have improved in their schools.

Governance and Inclusion

The Kyrgyz law encourages CSOs to participate in village planning processes. To support this, AKF is working in 67 sub-districts and six cities of Osh, Jalal-Abad, Batken and Naryn oblasts. We mobilise communities and local government to organise, understand and address a range of opportunities and challenges, including health, education, livelihoods, women’s rights and natural resource management.

This will help them collaborate more effectively and enable local CSOs to represent their constituents’ concerns more directly. Ultimately, we hope that CSOs will be able to influence the allocation of resources to issues that directly concern local communities, especially those of youth.

Participatory governance activities currently reach more than 352,000 people in Osh, Naryn, Jalal-Abad and Batken oblasts.

The University of Central Asia’s Civil Society Initiative

The Civil Society Initiative advances critical thinking about civil society’s development, institutions, stakeholders and leaders in Central Asia. It shares knowledge with stakeholders such as governments to foster an enabling environment for civil society and nonprofits. It builds the organisational capacity of a wide range of civil society groups and creates public awareness of their contribution. It also hosts the School for the Advancement of Gender Equality and the Academy of Women Leadership.