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This spring, CAF America sent 14 of our colleagues to eligible charitable partners around the world for the 2024 annual Site Visit program.
Our staff engage in these nonprofit site visits to gain local context to tailor grant strategies effectively, enhance risk management and compliance efforts, and foster trust through personal relationships with grantees. They also help monitor and evaluate grantee progress and impact, ensure funds are used as agreed and outcomes achieved, and strengthen their organizational expertise and knowledge to help make informed recommendations to donors.
Lev Heller (Business Process Analyst) and Anson Mersereau (Senior Associate, Grant Services) spent one week in Ghana visiting four nonprofit organizations. Learn more about their experience visiting Jabneel Impact below:
Jabneel’s holistic application process for new trainees considers individuals’ unique backgrounds and showcases clear pathways for over a dozen skills applicants can expand on to eventually turn into a business. Moses Ohene, their program director, noted that “the idea of the project was to ensure that we are able to create opportunities for orphans to move from their needy situations and become sustainably employed [through these acquired skills].” This approach has yielded impressive results, with 85% of those who are provided support going on to start and maintain their businesses within their three years following the program. CAF America funds actively supported this initiative, which has funded the training for 35 orphans and microfinancing support to 30 widows.
Jabneel Impact’s monitoring of the participants progress also shows that many of the people who have gone through the vocational training program have in turn taken on apprentices in their shops and businesses. This naturally developed knowledge transfer is something that Jabneel is hoping to factor into their future projects, intending to “build a team of trainers” that can be employed to educate future cohorts of participants, improving scalability in the future.
As a part of our site visit, we met with 12 participants of Jabneel’s vocation training program at one of their places of business, an open air salon. The owner, Mariam, welcomed us into her shop, expressing her appreciation for how the training she underwent changed her life for the better, a sentiment conveyed by all those in attendance. As we spoke with the women, one of the clearest impacts for a lot of these women was the financial independence that comes with owning their own businesses. “We have seen a lot of changes in our lives,” said one of the business owners. It was clear that those in the room were visibly proud of sharing the accomplishments they had made after Jabneel’s vocational training, being able to provide for themselves as well as their families, with the ultimate hope of being able to do the same for those they take under their wing.
