Melizsa Mugyenyi, Chief Executive Officer for the Graça Machel Trust.
At our core, we are an African-rooted organisation led by African women, who are co-creating solutions to some of the Continent’s biggest challenges together with the communities we serve.
Over the years, we have continued to tackle structural barriers to change how public and private institutions address women, adolescent girls, and children’s rights.
2022 marked 12 years since our establishment, and the core of who we are remains steadfast. Our ambitions, however have grown exponentially, fuelled by the creativity and determination of the changemakers we are privileged to work alongside every day.
This year, we deepened and expanded our impact across the breadth of our portfolio, and initiated an institutional transformation to improve the effectiveness and sustainability of our impact.
Women’s Economic Development
At the ecosystem level, our women’s networks achieved collective impact across 7 countries, influencing private and public actors to adopt more gender inclusive COVID – 19 economic recovery responses. Convened in 2021, their efforts were reinforced by the Expert Leaders Group, which consists of influential women leaders within Reserve and Central Banks in Africa, who are driving systemic action towards the advancement of women’s participation and inclusion in economies.
Recognizing the important role that women-owned businesses play in accelerating the economic and social advancement of their communities, we are working directly with women entrepreneurs in Malawi, Zambia, Tanzania, and South Africa. Together we are tackling one of the biggest barriers to the growth of these women-owned businesses – access to finance – by strengthening their capacity to secure financing. In further addressing this market failure, we generated commitments towards Afrishela, a gender lens investment fund which is poised to disrupt the investment landscape for Africa’s women entrepreneurs.
Adolescent Girls, and Children
2022 is also the year we pioneered the pan-African Adolescent Girls Movement, representing an innovative, new approach towards nurturing adolescent girls. Together with girls led and serving organizations, we have started in Southern Africa, and over the next few years, will ensure that all girls in Africa have a place and space to feel heard, nurtured and supported.
In the area of education, we made significant progress around enabling out-of-school children – and in particular girls -to return into the classroom in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Tanzania. This involved generating evidence in support of adapting and scaling an enhanced accelerated learning program for out-of-school children, to facilitate the re-integration of out-of-school rural girls into mainstream education and improve their education outcomes.
Institutional Transformation
We are on an exciting growth trajectory, and an internal transformation is underway to effectively position us to redouble our efforts. Comprised of seasoned professionals, the diverse experience of our dynamic leadership team continues to shape this transformation. We are growing in number, and are onboarding a range of mission-critical positions to bolster our in-house expertise. If you’re interested in joining us, please check out these openings on our website!
This year, we commenced a strategy development process with the aim of re-focusing, improving our sustainability, and growing our influence. We critically evaluated what we are doing right, and the lessons learned. We grounded our thinking in our environment to better understand how the groups we serve, our peers, partners, sector thought leaders and wider public see us, where they perceive our added value and why. We look forward to sharing more on our strategy in 2023!
Thank you.
Our year of transformation would not have been possible without our mission aligned community including our inspiring women’s networks; trusted funders; learning and thought partners; and experts. Thank you to the dedicated Graça Machel Trust team, indefatigable Board of Trustees, and above all, the women, children, and adolescent girls we serve.
The Trust supports and mobilises civil society networks on issues of ending child marriage, ending violence against children, ending female genital mutilation and promoting children’s rights, to carry out advocacy and action across Africa. Special focus is placed on Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania and Zambia where child marriage continues to be a problem largely driven by poverty, gender inequality, harmful traditional practices, conflict, low levels of literacy, limited opportunities for girls and weak or non-existent protective and preventive legal frameworks.
Education is a fundamental right for all children, which is also a vehicle for social, economic and political transformation in communities, countries and the African continent at large. Recent studies indicate a lack of progress in some of the critical commitments aimed at improving education quality, access, retention and achievement, particularly for girls. In most African countries, girls may face barriers to learning, especially when they reach post-primary levels of education. By implementing multi-dimensional approaches to education which includes core education, personal development, life skills and economic competencies, the Trust partners with funding partners, governments, civil societies and the private sector to improve education access.
The Nutrition and Reproductive, Maternal, New-born, Child and Adolescent Health and Nutrition, (RMNCAH+N) of the Children’s Rights and Development Programme aims at promoting the Global Strategy for women, children and adolescents’ health within the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) agenda. The strategy emphasises on the importance of effective country leadership as a common factor across countries making progress in improving the health of women, children and adolescents.
Through its Early Childhood Development (ECD) plan, The Trust will seek to put into action the new science and evidence Report that was presented by Lancet Series on Good and early development – the right of every child. This will be achieved by mobilising like-minded partners to contribute in the new science and evidence to reach all young children with ECD. The Trust’s goal is to be a catalyst for doing things differently, in particular, to rid fragmentation and lack of coordination across ECD sectors. In response to evidence showing the importance of political will in turning the tide against the current poor access and quality of ECD. Even before conception, starting with a mother’s health and social economic conditions, the early years of a child’s life form a fundamental foundation that determines whether a child will survive and thrive optimally.