Onevillage Partners

Programs: Community action program (act) & nurturing opportunities for women (now)onevillage partners' community action program trains volunteer leaders to effectively mobilize their communities. Through this program, onevillage partners trains community leaders who work with their villages to identify their most pressing problems, and then design and implement projects that address these problems. Communities develop leaders, cohesion and mobilization skills, and along the way they also gain measurable progress in health, education, income and livelihoods, or other areas that they have chosen to address. In 2017, onevillage partners expanded our reach, impacting more than 18,000 lives through a variety of community-designed initiatives. For example, we partnered with the communities of makka and madina, both of which designed and implemented sanitation and hygiene projects. Latrine coverage increased from 21% overall to 100%. Six months after implementation, households in makka have reported a 70% decrease in diarrhea cases, and in madina, they have reported a 78% drop in diarrhea cases. In mamboma, the community united to construct the skills training center. Mamboma then held two trainings, where the older generation actively shared marketable skills with the young adults. The trainings focused on producing soap and gari (a popular local snack), which instantly enabled unemployed youths to make an independent income. With young adults now helping to boost the local economy, they are more highly regarded by the community as a whole. Also during 2017, onevillage partners completed our second most significant change (msc) evaluation, which is a methodology that uses participant stories to inform outcomes of our work. Msc has proven to be a qualitative compliment to the more traditional quantitative data we are already gathering. We were especially excited to implement this as the participatory approach aligns with our organizational values, allowing participants to gain something from the evaluation process and putting their experiences front and center, and sharing the impacts and stories with all stakeholders. We also developed a "how to" guide for other organizations interested in the approach. Nurturing opportunities for women (now) because existing financial literacy programs assume a certain level of literacy or language comprehension, onevillage partners developed a picture-based curriculum, drawn by a local artist. The curriculum teaches participants basic financial principles, planning, and decision-making so that they can manage finances throughout the year to reach their goals. In 2017, the second cohort of women participated in the now program. 96% of participants met their first goal (most frequently for children's education) and 80% of women set and were working towards a second goal. Additionally, 98% of women in now reported increased public participation and 98% of participants reported increased decision making ability and were able to provide an example of a decision they made since starting the program. Onevillage partners projects are 95% sustainable - meaning that since 2005, 95% of the assets we have supported are currently functioning and being maintained by their communities today.

advocacy and outreach: onevillage partners' advocacy and outreach engages a broad range of stakeholders in understanding the benefits of community-led development approaches to international development, and the reasons for its effectiveness. This includes public outreach, educational blog posts, and publication regarding community-led development and onevillage partners' model, as well as providing opportunities for supporters to raise awareness, engage in productive dialogue, volunteer, donate or influence others within international development to support community-led solutions. In 2017, onevillage partners was an active participant in and presenter for the movement for community-led development, facilitated by the hunger project as an outlet for like-minded organizations to collaborate and strengthen awareness for community-led approaches. We also revamped and refined our traveler curriculum for our annual trip to sierra leone, strengthening and broadening our network of onevillage partners advocates throughout the country.