Our work is underpinned by the fundamental belief that community needs are best addressed by community members themselves. Shared perspective, language, culture, and lived experiences are crucial to identifying key challenges in creating sustainable change and building community resilience. This belief is operationalized through the creation of strong partnerships rooted in the four key organizational values of love, partnership, integrity, and transformation.
Rooted In Community. Building Towards Change.
Grounded in community voices, we work together to create opportunities, drive meaningful change, and build a more inclusive future for all.
OUR STORY
MAMA HOPE was founded in 2008 on a simple belief: communities should have the power and resources to shape their own futures.
For many years, we partnered with locally-led organizations through unrestricted funding, organizational support, and investments in income-generating initiatives. The aim was not only to fund important community-led work, but to support organizations in building stronger foundations and generating more of their own resources.
Post-2020 brought significant changes to the global development landscape. Funding priorities shifted in response to emerging global crises, while changes in the international development workforce disrupted many of the relationships and support structures that locally-led organizations had become accustomed to working within. But we noticed something important among the organizations we had partnered with: they kept going.
Despite significant disruption, many continued serving their communities, adapting their work and sustaining their organizations. Years of investing in organizational systems and income-generating initiatives meant that some had developed their own sources of revenue alongside external funding.
They also had something that could not disappear when international priorities changed: deep community roots, local leadership, and a purpose that extended beyond any single funder or partner.
This prompted us to ask a different question: What had enabled these organizations to navigate change, and what would it take for more locally-led organizations to build the foundations that would allow them to sustain their work?
The answer shaped the MAMA HOPE you see today. We shifted from primarily funding individual projects to strengthening the organizations behind them. We brought our team and decision-making closer to the region we serve, shifting to a team predominantly based in East Africa.
Bringing years of learning from our partnerships into a comprehensive curriculum focused on the strategies, systems, leadership, relationships and approaches to funding that enable organizations to make stronger decisions, adapt to change and plan for the future.
Today, we are taking what we learned alongside our partners and making it accessible to more locally-led organizations across East Africa, and to funders who want to invest not only in projects, but in the strength and sustainability of the organizations carrying that work forward.
OUR ETHOS
VISION
A world where the existing power of Locally-led Organizations is acknowledged and utilized, leading to the creation of a more equitable and prosperous future for all.
MISSION
Accelerate Locally-led organizations through systems strengthening building effectiveness, efficiency, and equity in locally-driven development leading to a balance in power dynamics.
MANIFESTO
We believe in creating a world where each individual has access to the resources they need to live happy and healthy lives.
We believe in creating an organization that will change the way that the world sees poverty, enable visionaries to use their passion to change the world and shift the power structures of development from the top down to eye level. True change comes from the shift from leadership to partnership.
We are not interested in creating change through our partners, instead we are invested in supporting our partners to have broad access to people, networks, and connections way beyond MAMA HOPE and to achieve this our work focuses on building the systems in place for success.
We are not interested in creating change through our partners, instead we are invested in supporting our partners to have broad access to people, networks, and connections way beyond MAMA HOPE and to achieve this our work focuses on building the systems in place for success.
VALUES | LOVE, PARTNERSHIP, INTEGRITY & TRANSFORMATION
OUR PEOPLE
MEET OUR TEAM
Our team brings together experience in organizational development, fundraising, communications, monitoring, evaluation, and learning, partnerships and locally-led development.
With most of our team based in East Africa, our work is shaped by proximity to the organisations we work alongside and the contexts in which they operate.
MEET OUR BOARD
Our Board brings together diverse professional and lived experience to provide oversight, challenge our thinking, and support MAMA HOPE’s long-term direction.
We continue to strengthen our governance so that it reflects the organisation we are becoming and the communities and partners at the centre of our work.
ANNUAL REPORTS & 990s
SAFEGUARDING
LANGUAGE BANK
We believe that language shapes narratives, and narratives shape systems. Too often, the development sector reinforces harmful power dynamics through the language of charity, pity, or saviorism. Our Language Bank challenges that by offering terms that affirm the dignity, expertise, and leadership of the communities we work with.
INVEST IN THE PEOPLE BEHIND OUR MISSION
MAMA HOPE's work is made possible by a team committed to keeping our mission moving forward—from delivering our curriculum and building relationships with locally-led organizations to strengthening partnerships, learning from our work and advocating for a more equitable development sector. Your donation invests in the people and capacity behind this work, enabling our team to stay focused on our mission, respond to what we are learning and continue working toward the vision we have set for the future.
