By Emma Mogaka, Training Manager

She’s the First hosted the seventh iteration of the Virtual Girls First Summit in September, two months after the in-person summit in Nairobi. 

The Girls First Summit is an annual convening of girl-centered organizations for knowledge-sharing and targeted training, with local and global insights on best practices for supporting girls’ rights. The virtual summit brought together 90 practitioners from 11 countries, including Kenya, Tanzania, India, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Zambia, Ghana, and Malawi. The participants left with practical tools and unique strategies to increase girls’ agency.

Findings from the She’s the First Salary Survey

During the virtual summit, Kate Kiama, our Director of Programs and Impact, shared findings from our salary survey. Earlier this year, we surveyed our Girls First Network members about remuneration and compensation—this exercise aimed to help network members negotiate better salaries. We received 201 responses from network members in 23 East and West African, Latin American, Caribbean, and South Asian countries. Some Key findings of the survey are:

• There is a lot of fear and distrust around talking about remuneration within community-based organizations (CBOs) in the global South, regardless of it being anonymous.

• There is a vast pay disparity between high-ranking officials in CBOs and junior staff across the organizations. Executive Directors and CEOs earn quite heavily compared to junior staff. Interns and volunteers are potentially being exploited.

• 54% of the respondents feel their salaries are below the market range. However, respondents from Malawi, Namibia, and the Gambia reported overall satisfaction with their wages and benefits. 50% of the respondents reported feeling neutral about their salaries in Tanzania.

• For Kenya, Ghana, Nepal, Trinidad, and Uganda, the respondents reported working as volunteers and were being remunerated with allowances and not salaries.

• Regarding benefits, most respondents indicated paid time off, meal subsidies, and educational plans. Paid maternity leave was not experienced across the board. Few respondents reported medical insurance, commuter allowance, study leave, and pension.

Focusing on Community Strengths: An Introduction to Asset-Based Approaches

Participants moved into the first session, “An Introduction to Community-Driven, Asset-Based Approaches,” which interrogated the challenges of the needs-based approach to development, particularly when working with girls and vulnerable groups. “Using needs surveys to identify deficiencies and problems only gives us one side of the community’s story,” said the facilitator, Ceci Arriaza, She’s the First’s Senior Programs Manager. The session explored a more progressive way, which is the community-driven, asset-based approach.

Ceci shared that a community-driven, asset-based approach focuses on harnessing and building upon the strengths and resources within a community to address its needs. As an exercise, participants identified the assets of the girls in their communities. It was enlightening to hear participants recognize girls’ strengths such as voice, freedom of expression, talents and skills, presence of support groups and safe spaces, and supportive parents and community members.

To further explain the concept, Ceci shared some differences between a needs-based approach and an asset-based approach to girls’ programming. For instance, a needs-based approach relies heavily on external support, while an asset-based approach emphasizes leveraging local assets and fostering collaboration within the community. She illustrated this as outsourcing funding and mentors versus engaging the community first.

Some principles of an asset-based approach include participatory decision-making and collaboration, which involve engaging the community in all stages and partnering to leverage collective resources and expertise. “Programs are more effective and lasting when community members dedicate their time and talents to the changes they want,” Ceci explained. “When efforts are built around community strengths, girls are likely to feel more positive about them and believe they can be successful.”

Seeing Your Constituents as Partners: Exploring Community-Centric versus Donor-Centric Fundraising

Practitioners also participated in the “Let’s Talk Money for Girls’ Rights” session facilitated by our Development Manager, Kayla Pate. We recognize that girls and female activists have always been at the forefront of demanding change and community development. Yet young girls and women-led CBOs hardly get sufficient resources to support their impactful work. The session shared strategies to fundraise for their programs while continuing to center girls’ rights and needs.

In parallel with the previous session, Kayla shared two different philosophies of fundraising: donor-centric and community-centric philosophies. Like the asset-based approach of the prior session, the community-centric fundraising philosophy sees community members as partners and key stakeholders in the program’s success—while the donor-centric model attributes success solely to the donor (external support, as in the needs-based approach above). Kayla highlighted the differences and expounded on how best to fundraise at the intersection of both philosophies, depending on where they are in the donor engagement process. She also expounded on how to better understand donors in acquiring, engaging, and retaining them through the stages of donor engagement. 

Both session topics merged further when a few participants questioned how organizations can fundraise when they do not yet have donors. Kayla pointed out that they can reach out to the community and other stakeholders through the asset-based approach.

We are excited to meet again in 2024 for continued learning and experience-sharing, with the shared goal of strengthening our girls’ programs and ensuring that girls everywhere are educated, respected, and heard!