Special Initiatives
From time to time the trustees of the
Baring Foundation choose an issue to support which lies outside our
three main grant programmes but within our values. The sums of money
deployed are less than for grants programmes. Funding is used flexibly,
for instance on commissioning research, networks or awards.
African Diaspora - African Development
 |
The Baring Foundation in Spring 2010 entered
into a joint venture with Comic Relief to promote the role of
African diaspora organisations based in the UK to advocate for
African development. It is expected that this relationship will
continue to 2014. This Special Initiative has sprung out of
the appreciation of both organisations as funders of the important
work of these organisations.
Project in Busoga, Uganda, run by an African
diaspora organisation.
Photograph courtesy of Comic Relief
|
In a series of roundtable discussions
held by the Baring Foundation in 2009 we realised that the African
diaspora is contributing in many ways to African development. The
huge contribution of remittances is now well understood and the African
Union has called the diaspora 'Africa's sixth region.' In fact there
is a tremendous amount of complexity to this topic and not everything
is positive - witness the so-called 'brain-drain' of many professionals
including to the NHS. Overall though there have been more opportunities
for members of the diaspora to play a role in recent years, for instance,
through volunteering (a scheme pilot funded by the Baring Foundation
has now been hugely expanded by VSO). Funding has greatly increased
through a grant by the Department for International Development to
Comic Relief of £20 million over three years for small and diaspora
organisations called Common Ground. However, the Baring Foundation
did feel that more could be done to create opportunities for African
diaspora organisations to use their connections and specific expertise
to contribute to the development of policy. In order to do this we
have funded a full-time time post, managed by Comic Relief, which
will leverage the work underway through their funding programme. This
post was filled in Autumn 2010. Further details can be obtained by
contacting James Murray at Comic Relief - J.Murray@comicrelief.com
Climate Change and the Third Sector
The stark conclusion of the Stern Report
published in October 2006, that ‘climate change presents very serious
global risks and it demands an urgent global response,’ prompted the
trustees of the Baring Foundation to explore what the Foundation could
contribute to this response. We went on to establish a Special Initiative
on Climate Change and the Third Sector. Our first step in 2007 was to
offer free environmental audits to a group of our grantees. The audits
generated some useful outputs for organisations in terms of practical
ideas for reducing their carbon footprints. Whilst some organisations
were able to reduce their carbon emissions, we saw that helping this
to happen in a small number of organisations was useful but not the
whole story. We also saw that some voluntary organisations remained
unconvinced that climate change was an issue for them when set against
the immediate needs of their beneficiaries. Organisations therefore
saw no role for themselves in engaging with climate change issues. There
are two damaging consequences of this. Firstly organisations are not
thinking about how climate change will affect their work – its nature
and scale. Secondly, those fighting to achieve the necessary urgent
global response are doing so without the help of organisations with
valuable skills and resources to add to the effort. We felt that it
would be useful to try to establish a wider understanding amongst non-environmental
voluntary organisations that climate change is more than just an environmental
issue.
Climate change will have an impact on many
areas that concern voluntary organisations such as poverty, housing,
health, security and well-being. On that basis, we decided to focus
the Special Initiative on supporting non-environmental voluntary organisations
to understand how the impacts of climate change will affect their charitable
purposes.
In 2009-10 we supported four projects to
work with different parts of the non-environmental voluntary sector
– refugee and human rights organisations, children and youth organisations,
community anchors and organisations working with vulnerable people.
 |
This work was written up in a publication
called An Unexamined Truth.
Click here to
see the publication. All the organisations that took
part in this work were able to make meaningful connections between
their work and the impacts of climate change and all went on to
carry out action, focusing particularly on how their services would
have to adapt. |
We found, however, that organisations did
not feel so confident about taking on climate change as a policy issue
and needed help to develop confident policy positions that went beyond
general calls for action. Consequently, in the next phase of the work,
launched in September 2010, the Foundation is supporting the ongoing
engagement of non-environmental voluntary organisations around a particular
policy goal namely energy efficiency, a clear priority amongst the range
of strategies for reducing GHG emissions. Energy efficiency also provides
a good entry-point for non-environmental voluntary organisations given
its contribution to objectives such as poverty alleviation and health
promotion. A group of independent funders, coordinated by the European
Climate Foundation, has gathered around a proposal to secure a high
ambition energy efficiency strategy from the UK government. This campaign
is being led by a partnership between Friends of the Earth (FoE) and
the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). Different funders are supporting
the components of what will be a wide campaign. The Baring Foundation’s
particular contribution is to support work to engage non-environmental
voluntary organisations in the campaign.
|
|
In 2008, we supported the publication
of a pamphlet by Stephen Hale of Green Alliance called The new
politics of climate change; why we are failing and how we could
succeed. This outlines the role the third sector can play in persuading
politicians to take action on climate change on the scale that is
needed. Click
here to see the publication. |
|
Interculturality
In 2007 the Baring Foundation explored the concept of interculturality
through a series of meetings. The term interculturality is unfamiliar
to most people and its definition and merit contested. We see it as
an acknowledgment of the cultural diversity of the UK along with a belief
that cultures should not live in isolation. Interculturality is suggested
as a process of dialogue between cultures which recognises that all
cultures change over time. The Foundation sees this as a positive, though
sensitive, process and wishes to promote its daily expression on the
ground through annual awards to celebrate and document good practice.
Our working definition. Interculturality
is a dynamic process whereby people from different cultures interact
to learn about and question their own and each other's cultures. Over
time this may lead to cultural change. It recognises the inequalities
at work in society and the need to overcome these. It is a process which
requires mutual respect and acknowledges human rights.
A major element of this initiative has
been the creation of awards for interculturality in action. They are
funded by us and delivered by the Institute of Community Cohesion. The
awards are for smaller and larger voluntary sector organisations and
for public and private sector organisations helping them. Awards were
given for the third year running at the Royal Society for Arts in London
on 2 December 2010. A dedicated website
www.bridgingcultures.org.uk describes
these awards. The Awards for Bridging Cultures have been highly successful
in identifying a wealth of good practice examples in interculturality
and the Foundation will not be funding a further year of these awards.
|
|
Photographs
courtesy of
Institute of Community Cohesion
|
|
In
February 2007 our Core Costs Club met and discussed the topic of interculturality.
Click
here to see notes of the Core Costs Club meeting.
Past Special Initiatives
Creating a Better Deal for Parents with
Learning Difficulties and their Children
People with learning difficulties are now more likely to become parents,
but the chance of a child being taken into care is remarkably high -
by some estimates 50%. In 2004 the Foundation began to explore what
might be done to enhance support for those parents.
A report published in March 2006,
commissioned by the Foundation, Finding the Right Support?
A review of issues and positive practice in supporting parents
with learning difficulties and their children,
(to download,
click here) created a great deal of interest among
the media, policy makers and practitioners.
|
|
To sustain this momentum we have funded
a consortium led by the Norah Fry Research Centre at the University
of Bristol, with additional funding from the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation.
The consortium involves parents with learning difficulties in all it
does which includes: a dedicated website; bi-monthly newsletters; a
network in Scotland; a policy Taskforce; and a series of regional meetings
in England for practitioners.
More information can be found on the website
www.right-support.org.uk
The Foundation support for this Special
Initiative ended in December 2009.
Replication
Although not a current Special Initiative, the Foundation has funded
a number of pieces of work on the theme of replication in the voluntary
sector which are brought together here. The first instance of our interest
was co-funding the 2003 publication under the auspices of the Association
of Charitable Foundations of Replicating Successful Voluntary Sector
Projects by Diana Leat
click here to download. We went on to give core costs
grant to two major pieces of work in this area. Firstly we funded the
Young Foundation's Launchpad project. Accompanying this work has been
a report by the Young Foundation's Director, Geoff Mulgan, on social
innovation, growth and replication: In and Out of Sync. You can
obtain them by going to
the Young Foundation's website here. Secondly
we funded the UnLtd Ventures team to work with social entrepreneurs
on replication which led to a series of resources which can be found
by clicking
here. We were very sad indeed to hear of the tragic death
of Sarah Dodds who worked so hard to complete this work. Lastly, the
UnLtd Ventures team worked with one of our grant recipients, the Revolving
Doors Agency. The reflections of their Director, Julian Corner on this
issue can be found in Same
Difference?
which can be downloaded here. The Foundation held several
seminars for funders under the auspices of ACF on this issue.
Volunteers for Museums
Again though not described as a Special Initiative
at the time, this work retrospectively fits this categorisation. As
part of our arts funding, for many years, the Foundation has occasionally
supported museums. A report by the Institute of Volunteering Research
(IVR) in 2002 had conducted research into the issue of volunteers in
museums. In 2004 as a response to this we made grants to three different
types of of museums (represented by The Egypt Centre at the University
of Wales, Swansea, Fairfax House in York and the Harris Museum and Art
Gallery in Preston) to enable them to enhance their numbers of volunteers.
This work was monitored by IVR and a report with good practice lessons
published in 2005. Exhibiting Support...developing volunteering in
museums can be
downloaded by clicking here.
|
