During the past two decades, there has been an increasing realisation that development programs are more effective when designed and executed by those most affected by the challenges they seek to address. That is why the SDG creation process was arguably the most participatory process in UN history, involving working groups, consultations, and open calls for feedback.

However, in retrospect, even that process had gaps and could have included many more communities and their concerns.

The Freedom Fund is nearly a decade into pursuing its mission of ending modern slavery, mainly by partnering with frontline organisations around the world. We have seen that the most sustainable and tangible change takes place when survivors of modern slavery and communities most vulnerable to exploitation take the lead. We work to fund their efforts and to amplify their voices and experiences.

As global attention turns to ‘localisation’, increasing numbers of people across the philanthropic sector are joining the conversation with a sense of urgency. In a world of compounding crises – including climate change, conflict, and disaster – donors have finally realised that the key to a better future is funding community-led organisations closest to these issues. The challenge now is how to turn this understanding into investment.

Investing in grassroots organisations and communities to help end modern slavery is what we do at the Freedom Fund. I’m encouraged that many philanthropists agree that shifting power and resources is fundamental to addressing inequalities. I’m passionate about ensuring our collective understanding of what it means to support frontline organisations is nuanced and effective and helping funders to support locally-based groups without causing harm. To do this, we need to engage in honest, meaningful and practical discussions about policies, costs, administrative requirements and grapple with the tensions between our assumptions and people’s lived experience.

When we first started operating in Ethiopia, supporting women migrating to the Middle East as domestic workers, we heard from several women and organisations that work with them that it was unsafe migration that needed addressing. Women needed economic independence to live dignified lives. We engaged a team in Ethiopia, and they helped us understand the nuance of the issue and how to explain it to our donors.

Consequently, we were able to support an incredibly impactful program informed by lived experience and community-level knowledge. We now fund an established shelter, trauma counselling, and vocational training, so women are not forced to return to exploitative work to earn a living. Combined with efforts to strengthen government approaches and raise awareness about unsafe migration, the NGOs we are funding are shifting the systems that contribute to exploitation.

As funders of frontline partners, we’ve had to revisit the assumptions, policies, and processes that shape our grantmaking. This will certainly ring true within the SDGs agenda, as focus moves towards shifting responsibility to local and regional actors and governments. While that has come with a certain level of additional complexity and effort, it has also been deeply rewarding.  For instance, it is one thing to say that grantmaking strategies should be informed by those who are closest to an issue. It is another to involve communities and activists from day one, asking them to define not only the issue they are faced with, but also their vision for a different future.

Putting into context

The SDGs, if understood out of context, could have a very different result than the intention of the goal. For instance, Goal 8 is to promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment, and decent work for all. Target 8.2 aims for higher levels of productivity through diversification and technological upgrades. Divorced from the understanding of women’s and girls’ experience, this could lead us to assume that digital skills programs are an effective pathway to women’s economic empowerment.

In each of our programs, we engage local experts who manage the grants process and convene communities of practice – it is their instinctive understanding of the context, their understanding of the language and vocabulary that’s relevant, and their ability to respond to people on the phone and in person, that makes all the difference to partners, in a grantmaking process.

But as our work with some women in Ethiopia shows, it is the one-on-one engagement and understanding of context that enables survivors of exploitation to move towards economic independence. Having a phone and watching a video is simply not what is most critical to many survivors – it’s the practical support that includes how to operate a bank account, being confident in asking when one needs help, and being able to speak to someone about the residual fear of being verbally abused that may enable the onward journey for a survivor.

This has been important learning for us. So, instead of drafting a full strategy and then asking for feedback from potential grantees, we take a slower, more consultative approach. The result is stronger relationships with our partners, who have already been deeply involved in setting objectives and goals that fit their understanding of the problem and potential solutions. We try to compensate for time and investment in this process through small and flexible grants initially, recognising that it is this work by grantees that’s often unacknowledged in grant budgets.

Through this journey, the range of support we offer to partner organisations has become more suited to the stage they’re at, because a one-size-fits-all approach ignores the diversity of their contexts and needs. In each of our programs, we engage local experts who manage the grants process and convene communities of practice – it is their instinctive understanding of the context, their understanding of the language and vocabulary that’s relevant, and their ability to respond to people on the phone and in person, that makes all the difference to partners, in a grantmaking process. After many years of providing this support and seeing the benefits, we continue to think of these resources as critical to our mission – not optional ‘overheads’.

The Freedom Fund is a collaborative fund that prioritises raising unrestricted resources so that we are able to do this work at scale, but the principle is applicable to any donor or institution. If the SDGs are to meaningfully impact people, to be relevant in everyday life, the solutions must be community led and scaled upwards with the focus on the terminology, framework and processes that make sense to those impacted most. To fund frontline organisations, and be part of a journey towards sustainable and significant change, we need to structure processes around what partners actually need, rather than expecting them to thrive within traditional, philanthropic systems that weren’t built by or for them. The best way to figure out what that looks like is to ask and listen.

It is our hope that by sticking our head above the parapet – with a resounding yes to frontline organisations and localisation, but not without the nuance it requires of all of us – frontline groups and communities have access to the space and funding they require to lead global conversations towards ending exploitation.

Havovi Wadia is Director of Programs at Freedom Fund

Note to Readers: Funding Frontline Impact (http://www.fundingfrontlineimpact.org), a new website from the Freedom Fund, shares stories, tools and resources to help donors in their frontline grantmaking, no matter the cause or geography.

To further this conversation, the Freedom Fund is sharing years of experience on fundingfrontlineimpact.org, a free online resource that details our best practices in frontline funding and attempts to bridge the gap between ideas and action