Growing Together:

from Grethe Petersen, Chief Executive Officer, and Dr. Narmeen Hamid, Chair of the Board of Directors

Sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) were under attack in many parts of the world in 2023, from the United States to Uganda. To prevent the erosion of crucial rights, supporting local organisations and movements remains as important as ever.

Against this challenging context, AmplifyChange was proud to support our amazing grantee partners as they continued to defend and improve SRHR in their communities in 2023, including the rights of sexual and gender minorities and the prevention and management of unintended pregnancy. We believe that every person has the right to live in dignity and security and to access the healthcare they need without stigma or barriers.

A great example is The People’s Matrix Association of Lesotho, which plays a key role in the country’s LGBTIQ rights movement. They collaborate with other partners such as faith-based organisations, sex workers, youth, and psychologist associations to improve post-violence support and care for the LGBTIQ community. As a result of their advocacy, Lesotho has enacted the Counter Domestic Violence Act of 2022. This provides more protection and specific clauses addressing violence on the basis of sexual characteristics, gender diversity, and sexual orientation. Their story, and so many other stories of change in this report, are what inspire our work.

We nearly doubled our grants expenditure in 2023 to GBP 8,402,812, and we were pleased to run our first open call in four years for our smallest grant size: Opportunity Grants, which support local level advocacy. Demand was overwhelming, with the round attracting the highest number of applications to date:

The breadth and number of applications for this funding round highlight the need for funding smaller civil society groups, including those who are unregistered with their national authorities. As the environment for SRHR becomes more hostile across many countries, it is more important than ever to support new and emerging organisations. We welcome and look forward to supporting our newest 127 grantee partners.

Of course, AmplifyChange is more than a fund, and in 2023 we strengthened our offering through our other delivery streams. We continued to gather insights and feedback from our grantee partners and applicants to optimise our ways of working.

• our grantee partners showcasing their incredible work at side events and discussion sessions at the Women Deliver conference in Kigali, Rwanda in July
• enhancing organisational strengthening with skills-building courses in digital fundraising and strategic planning, with more to come in 2024
• implementing new virtual platforms for linking grantee partners and finding better ways to showcase the breadth and diversity of their SRHR work

We learn from our grantee partners. Their priorities and approaches shape the grants we make, and we strive to jointly share their knowledge and experience with the SRHR community. We thank our grantee partners for continuing to inform and ground our work.

We were delighted to welcome Dana Hovig to our Board of Directors and Vinoj Manning to our Members this year. At the same time, we said goodbye to Mike Dahlgaard, Board Director, and Fawzia Rasheed, Founding Member, and we are deeply grateful for their invaluable contributions to AmplifyChange.

We are grateful to our committed team who continue to support with passion and dedication our important vision to secure full attainment of sexual and reproductive health and rights for all.

We would also like to thank our donors who have supported us over the past nine years: The United Kingdom’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office; The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands; Viiv Healthcare’s Positive Action for Women and Girls; The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation; and an anonymous donor.

AmplifyChange funds and supports civil society organisations (CSOs) who advocate for improved sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) in their communities. Our vision is to secure full attainment of sexual and reproductive health and rights for all. We believe this can only be achieved through building a stronger civil society with diverse organisations who are resilient and work together to grow robust movements for change.

• Increase individual awareness of SRHR as human rights
• Increase access to SRHR resources, information and services
• Transform social norms
• Catalyse changes in, and implementation of, policies and laws
• Build stronger, more inclusive movements for SRHR

Launched in 2021, our innovative Partnership Grants aim to build the capacity of organisations in Africa and South Asia to act as dynamic regional and global leaders in SRHR advocacy. With the facility to on-grant to smaller local groups, these partners enhance a sustainable, resilient local response.

Our first round supported Conseil et Appui pour l’Education à la Base (CAEB) in Mali, UHAI – the East African Sexual Health and Rights (EASHRI) in Kenya, and Gender Links in South Africa. Two years in, the impact of this novel funding mechanism is evident. It has acted as a springboard to additional knowledge and community partnerships, enabling smaller organisations and startups to secure otherwise inaccessible funding.

CAEB (Mali) launched its first funding round in 2023 through their newly established grant-making mechanism, Dambe Funds Sahel. This provides local civil society groups in West Africa with funding to strengthen grassroots advocacy for improved SRHR. Out of 508 applications, 30 smaller CSOs were selected for funding in 20 cities in Mali, Guinea, Niger, and Senegal, including:

Issues being addressed by their grantee partners include access to SRHR for poor, vulnerable and marginalised groups, including persons living with disabilities or HIV/AIDS; gender-based violence, including FGM/C, domestic and sexual violence; and better sexual health for young people.

Their grantee partners benefited from capacity building workshops (attended by 262 CSO leaders), technical assistance and tools for monitoring and evaluation and financial management. Dambe Funds Sahel provided them with funding to implement their capacity building plans; detailed policy analysis of the SRHR sector in their respective countries; and research on SRHR, funding and advocacy mapping, to support their planning and implementation.

Dambe Funds Sahel also designed a new website to improve communications about their work and make available the studies and resources developed with their Partnership Grant. More information about the projects of Dambe Funds Sahel’s on-grantees, studies and training resources is available on their website.

UHAI EASHRI (Kenya) supported 12 intersectional LGBTIQ and sex worker organisations in five East African countries (The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda and Tanzania). The aim is to galvanise their response to the attack on human rights driven by anti-rights and anti-gender actors in the region and Africa more broadly. UHAI provided general support grants to their partners to strengthen advocacy and strategic communication programmes addressing the effects of negative socio-political shifts in Eastern Africa.

• national coordination of strategic coalitions
• increased visibility of LGBTIQ people and sex workers in national, regional and global agenda-setting spaces
• sensitisation of duty-bearers on the rights of key population communities
• self-care and collective care for community sustainability
• strengthening of safety and security mechanisms and initiatives by partners
• boosting and safeguarding programmatic work

Strengthening these partner-led coalitions and supporting their activists has facilitated strategic litigation and communications pushing back against the anti-rights movements. UHAI’s general support and multi-year funding have given their partners flexibility to adapt to the changing environment and build the resilience of their movements.

Gender Links (South Africa) Voice and Choice Southern Africa Fund launched two funding calls – Movement Building Grants and Opportunity Grants – which attracted 154 applications and resulted in 38 grants. The number of organisations receiving grants were:

In 2023, Gender Links provided training and support to their new grantee partners. This included organisational assessments and virtual trainings, but also enabling them to access global opportunities to link with a wider network of SRHR advocates. The attendance of a cohort of 10 Voice and Choice grantee partners at the international Women Deliver conference in July in Kigali, Rwanda, provided unique opportunities for learning, lasting connections with allies, and even leveraged new funding (see GRIT’s story below).

Gender Links also hosted a Voice and Choice Learning and Sharing Summit in November, bringing together Southern African gender equality advocates to strengthen partnerships between women’s rights and mainstream organisations working in the SADC region, creating powerful cross-sectoral partnerships. Participants shared learnings and best practice across the spectrum of SRHR, and 22 awards were given out for work supporting organisational development and leadership, as well as thematically on sex work, GBV, adolescent SRH, early pregnancies and child marriage, LGBTIQ, menstrual health, and safe abortion.

Further collaboration and work across the Voice and Choice grantee partners included celebrating 16 Days of Activism and spearheading the Safe Abortion Alliance Southern Africa.

• funding organisational strengthening activities within AmplifyChange projects
• using our due diligence process to provide constructive organisational recommendations
• providing internal and external skills-building opportunities
• connecting organisations to each other to facilitate cross-movement peer learning

AmplifyChange encourages organisations to utilise up to 40% of their grant funds for core and organisational strengthening work.

As of the end of 2023, 9% of all active grant budgets focused on organisational strengthening. Not surprisingly, this proportion was higher for small or medium-sized grantee partners (those receiving Opportunity or Strengthening Grants), who allocated 24% of their grant budgets to building capacity, such as through staff training, IT equipment, and developing policies.

To monitor the impact of our funding on organisational development in general, in 2023 we added a new section to our final project report template asking grantee partners to reflect on their organisational journey through the life of their AmplifyChange grant.

Feedback from participants was overwhelmingly positive. All respondents said they had increased their knowledge of strategic planning and its importance; most having started a new strategic plan or refreshed their existing one with the skills they gained. In addition, many reported starting collaborative work with organisations they had met on the course. Participants highlighted the importance of interacting with course leads and with each other. We will integrate their feedback into the course series in 2024, which will include courses on communications, fundraising, and advocacy skills.

Discussions are ongoing on how to cascade more widely the valuable information developed through the course, including integrating course content within AmplifyChange Learn.

To strengthen the movement for SRHR, cross-movement learning is key. AmplifyChange takes every opportunity to connect organisations with each other to foster the exchange of experience.  

In 2023, we hosted two in-country convenings with our grantee partners: one in Cameroon and one in Malawi.

Key to AmplifyChange’s mission is amplifying the voices of civil society advocates seeking to improve SRHR in their contexts. One way that we do this is through sharing knowledge to support advocacy, centring our grantee partners and providing a platform for them to share their work. While many platforms have remained virtual in the wake of COVID-19, opportunities to share learnings in person at an international level are still critical for making connections and engaging with new audiences.

In July 2023, the AmplifyChange team attended Women Deliver, the world’s largest conference on gender equality. The conference took place in Kigali, Rwanda, with over 6,000 attendees from across the world exploring the broad spectrum of gender equality issues and intersections.

AmplifyChange hosted several panel and side events to foster strong links between activists, share lessons and experience, and highlight the work of our incredible grantee partners. Event topics included comprehensive sexuality education (CSE), abortion rights, and decolonising grant-making.

Co-organised with Health Development Initiative Rwanda, Sida and MSI Reproductive Choices, this side event brought together a panel of activists from the abortion movements in Zimbabwe, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, and Ethiopia. They shared their experiences and reflections on what makes an effective advocacy movement, key communication and messaging approaches, and how to support long-lasting, sustainable movements. Activists from Africa, South Asia, and Latin America were invited to enjoy a safe space for networking, learn from one another, and build relationships beyond the conference walls.

The landscape of funding for sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) has undergone a radical shift. This side event presented a panel of grant-making organisations based in Africa who are changing the funding landscape for SRHR. They fund organisations working to improve the SRHR movement in their contexts and strengthen dynamic regional and global leaders to advocate for SRHR. AmplifyChange grantee partners Gender Links, Conseil et Appui pour l’Education de Base (CAEB), UHAI-EASHRI, and Initiative Sankofa d'Afrique de l'Ouest (ISDAO) presented their funding models, key learnings, and recommendations for innovation in grant-making.

The way young people learn about gender and sexuality continues to be a contested issue worldwide. In conservative religious and cultural contexts, bold grassroots activism successfully pushes boundaries to advance gender equality. This side event, co-organised by Faith to Action Network, the Berlin Institute for Population and Development, Religions for Peace, AmplifyChange and ACT Ubumbano, focused on how young activists have developed new language, strategies, and alliances to protect or recover ground in culturally and religiously conservative contexts. Speakers discussed how they have successfully navigated patriarchal decision-making spaces, shared language and messaging that resonates within conservative communities, and presented strategies for success in gaining unlikely allies. A summary of the event is available here.

In partnership with SheDecides, the Global Safe Abortion Dialogue, of which AmplifyChange is a coordinating member, supported a concurrent session highlighting best practices, progress and innovations in delivering abortion as essential healthcare. See key highlights of this session here.

As endorsers of the Pleasure Principles, AmplifyChange is committed to supporting pleasure-based sexual health in the advocacy work we fund.

At the 2023 World Association for Sexual Health Congress, Young and Alive Initiative and AmplifyChange gave a panel presentation on the importance of integrating pleasure into SRHR programming.  

In 2023 we were also pleased to contribute new evidence to the field of pleasure-based sexual health through analysis of the impact of our collaboration with the Pleasure Project and The Case for Her in 2021 and 2022. In this initiative, eight AmplifyChange grantee partners received additional funding to implement pleasure-based sexual health approaches to their work. They had technical support from the Pleasure Project team and opportunities to learn from each other and other pleasure experts.

With support from the AmplifyChange and the Pleasure Project teams, an independent researcher analysed the impact of this work in six countries. The research identified explored outcomes through focus group discussions and surveys with the participating organisations. They identified key ways pleasure can be used to improve SRHR advocacy in different contexts, as well as the barriers to and recommendations for practical implementation. 

The research was published in Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters. You can read the full article here.

We will be widely disseminating the research outcomes and learning from this collaboration between AmplifyChange, the Pleasure Project and The Case for Her, to help inform and expand pleasure-based work throughout SRHR work.

The best practice note was launched as part of a pleasure panel during the Women Deliver 2023 conference in Kigali, Rwanda. You can watch the panel in action here, on our YouTube channel.

AmplifyChange’s indicators for monitoring pleasure-based sexual health projects have also been included in guidance from the IPPF East and South Asia and Oceania Region office on how to integrate pleasure-based sexual health into youth programming, available here.

Having distributed over GBP 100 million in grants over a decade supporting grassroots SRHR advocacy, it was important to us to understand the impact of our work to date. What had our grantee partners discovered about effective advocacy initiatives and partnerships? What issues were they prioritising, and how? How can AmplifyChange best leverage their learning to support each other in the shared goal to improve SRHR around the world?

To investigate, AmplifyChange commissioned an independent review, ‘Illuminating Impact: Insights and Outcomes’⁴ which looked at a sample of 58 grantee partner reports, spanning 46 countries, submitted in 2022 and early 2023. Grants ranged in size, type and scope (e.g. implemented in a single country or multinational). The review did not just look at project outcomes but also at what had been important about the grant for the grantee partners, stories of change, approaches to peer-learning and collaboration, and their experience of technical assistance from AmplifyChange. 

The findings were illuminating and inspiring, providing insights into the impact of our funding on the ground as well as actionable recommendations for further enhancing our support to grantee partners and the SRHR movement as a whole.

• AmplifyChange plays a critical and unique role in supporting organisations engaging in extremely challenging work with highly marginalised individuals in some of the most conservative contexts in the world.
• AmplifyChange grants are, as intended, filling gaps in funding for some of the most pressing regions, issues, and abuses, including working with and for those whose sexual and reproductive health needs are often overlooked.
• Deep and lasting change requires interventions to work at all levels of the socioeconomic framework and to address SRHR in the holistic, comprehensive way individuals experience it.
• In gender transformative approaches, the meaningful and positive engagement of men and boys is critical to success.
• Even when not a primary priority, advocacy is often woven into the fabric of many grants; service deliverers, educators, and case workers, can be effective advocates.

• Grantee partners welcome opportunities to learn from and collaborate with each other and would like AmplifyChange to bring them together.
• AmplifyChange could foster more targeted learning and collaboration around intersectionality; for example, the explicit recognition of how sexual orientation and other factors, like poverty or disability, may interact to multiply deprivations.
• Grantee partners would benefit from clarification around some of the terminology and formats of application materials.
  

In a moving reminder of the humanity of our work, the report noted that while some grants “…are not likely to achieve large scale, nor will they shift social norms on their own, … the lives of these individuals and those closest to them may be forever changed. That, in itself, may be worth the investment.” We think so.

AmplifyChange launched the review findings at a special event at the United Nations General Assembly in New York in September. Joined by Population Council, Pravah, and Trans Equality Uganda, Gender Equality Solutions presented the findings before a panel of grantee partners, who also spoke about their work. You can read about the full event here.

As a fund, we will be looking closely at the learning from the review to inform our grant-making, enhance our support to grantee partners, shape our priorities and expand our learning platforms, maximising our ability to promote change.

As ever, we welcome conversation around how we can work together better in the service of our common cause to enhance SRHR for all. The full report is available here and a summary report, with key highlights, is available here. Let us know what you think.

AmplifyChange and the grantee partnership as a whole continue to benefit from the advice and guidance of our Grantee Reference Group (GRG), a panel of grantee partners representing the diverse range of organisations we support.

• considered the results of grantee feedback surveys and suggestions for change
• were updated on AmplifyChange grant-making
• explored the new AmplifyChange Learn Community, and reviewed feedback on changes to the Grants Portal
• discussed feedback and the learning shared from the Women Deliver conference, both by AmplifyChange and grantee partners
• tested the look and functionality of the new AmplifyChange branding
  

New members of the Grantee Reference Group were appointed to replace those outgoing. AmplifyChange received 48 applications to join the Group; existing and outgoing members made appointments based on set criteria.

We strive to ensure that the panel reflects the diversity of our grantee partners and the population groups they serve across all SRHR themes. We were pleased this year to expand the GRG structure to include a group for Francophone grantee partners, which will enable more input from organisations representing the broad scope of our portfolio and geographies.

The Grantee Reference Group now has five organisations from Anglophone countries and five from Francophone countries, with a total of 10 countries represented.

• Muslim Family Counselling Service – Ghana  
• Tranz Network Uganda  
• Generation Initiative for Women and Youth Nigeria (GIWYN)
• The Awakening – Pakistan    
• Turning Point – Bangladesh  
• Association Ladies First – Tunisia  
• Alliance pour les droits des femmes mauritianiennes (ADFM) – Mauritania    
• Youth Coalition – Burundi  
• Centre d’accion communitaire pour le developpement Integre (CACDI) – Democratic Republic of the Congo  
• Project Jeune Leader – Madagascar
  

AmplifyChange continued our core mission of reaching grassroots organisations and supporting movements for change through direct grant-making in 2023:

• 27% of our grant funding directly supported local organisations through Opportunity and Strengthening Grants.
• We provided significant support to SRHR civil society movements through our Network Grants, with GBP 4,114,390 – 49% of funding – in 2023.
• Partnership Grant recipients disbursed GBP 568,400 to grassroots organisations through on-granting, with more grant-making to come in 2024.