Press Releases

$100 Million Initiative Helps Local Foundations Find Grassroots Solutions to Global Problems

NEW YORK, January 3, 2007 — This fall the Ford Foundation marks the halfway point of a $100 million effort to help independent foundations around the world support grassroots solutions to poverty and injustice.

The International Initiative to Strengthen Philanthropy (IISP) funds 18 organizations based in 13 countries that are working to identify critical challenges to local and regional development, mobilize domestic and international resources, and seed and strengthen the work of local civil society organizations.

The Ford Foundation launched the program to help boost the role that philanthropy can play in collaborative efforts by governments, civil society organizations, grassroots communities and international organizations to fight global poverty and improve the lives and livelihoods of men, women and children around the world.

The organizations are using grants from the Ford Foundation to enhance their grant-making programs, strengthen governance structures, augment endowments and attract new funders. Together, their work spans the United States, Latin America and the Caribbean, sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and North Africa, Eastern Europe and South Asia.

"Our work around the world is guided by the belief that solutions to the world’s most complex problems need to engage the people and the communities living closest to them," said Susan V. Berresford, president of the Ford Foundation. "IISP can help ensure that the most innovative ideas are getting the support they deserve. It is helping to solidify the important role that foundations, big or small, can play in addressing the root causes of society’s most enduring problems."

Organizations receiving funding through IISP include:

• TrustAfrica, an independent foundation governed solely by Africans that helps African institutions work together to develop lasting solutions to the continent's most pressing challenges.
• The Dalit Foundation, the first grant-making institution in South Asia committed to serving and protecting the Dalit communities.
• The Fund for Global Human Rights, a grant-making organization that supports grassroots human rights organizations in Latin America, Africa and South Asia.

For more information and a complete list of grantees, visit http://www.fordfound.org/news/more/IISP

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The Ford Foundation is an independent, nonprofit grant-making organization. For more than half a century it has worked with courageous people on the frontlines of social change worldwide, guided by its mission to strengthen democratic values, reduce poverty and injustice, promote international cooperation, and advance human achievement. With headquarters in New York, the foundation has offices in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.