CORPORATE GIVING

SPW is developing the next generation of leaders around the world, in 11 countries, on 5 continents, while simultaneously delivering life-saving health and education services to underserved children and youth in rural communities.

SPW believes that the private sector can play a vital role in this process, helping develop our young leaders and bringing a unique set of skills to make our programmes more effective. SPW’s activities in the UK and abroad provide many opportunities for company employees to get involved and meaningfully contribute to our work.

We find that partnerships are most successful if custom-designed to meet the circumstances of each private sector partner and their employees. Below are five ways in which SPW has successfully implemented partners with private sector companies.

SPW forms relationships based on shared values and goals, and strives to make all partnerships much broader than just financial support with full input and benefits for both SPW and our partners.

1) Internal Capacity Building

As a growing organisation, SPW is keen to take advantage of the private sector’s expertise and resources to build our own capacity to deliver programmes that benefit rural children and youth. SPW engages with and learns from our private sector partners to make SPW a more effective and efficient business, as well as a high-impact charitable organisation.

The Vodafone Group Foundation; 3-year Capacity Building Initiative; SPW International 

Having supported SPW’s programmes in South Africa, the Vodafone Group Foundation and SPW have agreed an exciting and multi-faceted 3-year initiative designed to stregnthen SPW International’s internal systems and staff capacity in the core competency areas of monitoring and evaluation, finance management and resource mobilisation. The Vodafone-SPW partnership is specifically designed support SPW’s expansion in existing countries of operation as well as new countries over the next three years, supporting pilot initiatives in sports-based health promotion and work in teacher training colleges in Southern Africa, as well as creating training internships for African and South Asian young people at SPW’s head office in the UK. This type of long-term capacity building partnership is particularly successful in helping SPW leverage additional support from other partners.

2) Programme Development

Funding programme developments allows SPW to expand both geographically and enhance programme content - crucial to delivering the most effective programmes to the people who need them most.

Xansa; Project Funding; SPW India

Xansa used its IT expertise to help SPW establish Village Knowledge Centers to increase the technology and information resource capacity of rural communities. This will enhance the delivery of the SPW India programme through young people having increased access to information and opportunities for skills development.

3) Technical Assistance and Personal Development for Employees

The private sector has significant experience and highly trained resources in areas that can benefit SPW such as HR, security and risk assessment, marketing and public relations. A technical assistance placement of 1-3 weeks with an SPW country programme greatly increases the capacity of our offices and offers your employees the opportunity to apply their skills in a challenging new environment and bring that experience back to the UK to the benefit of their office.

Centre for Public Innovation; Management Consulting; SPW South Africa

CPI sent one of its management consultants to the Eastern Cape to help conduct strategic planning sessions with SPW South Africa’s Community Health Education programme team, helping deliver more effective programmes in target rural communities.

4) Double Impact – Meaningful opportunities for Less Advantaged Young People

SPW programmes provide unique leadership, decision-making and project management training for young people from both the North and South – success measured by the high number of volunteers going on to higher education and meaningful employment. Many volunteers can not afford to support themselves on the programme and SPW is only limited by funds to be able to offer young people that chance.

Bloomberg; Sponsorship of Volunteers; SPW UK and Uganda.

Bloomberg has provided sponsorship for 5 UK and 5 Ugandan volunteers to work together in pairs on SPW Uganda’s health and environmental programmes. In addition, the 5 UK volunteers will undergo a 3 month internship with Bloomberg on their return. This kind of sponsorship provides a unique personal development experience and increases their chances of future employment.

5) In kind

In-kind donations make an immediate and real difference to our work. They give a direct link between companies and an SPW programme as their contribution has a direct impact on the ground in the communities where we work, from computers to books to bicycles.

Standard Chartered; Vehicles; SPW Uganda

Two Toyota Hilux vehicles help SPW Uganda to reach rural communities that have little or no access to information and provide support to volunteers placed in those communities. This has directly increased the number of people benefiting from peer health and environmental education.

Air France; Flights; SPW UK 

Enabling a supporter of SPW to see the work that we do on the ground increases their understanding of the work they are helping and gives them direct interaction with the programmes. SPW is grateful to Air France for giving 2 SPW supporters this opportunity.

For more information on how your company can be involved in the work of SPW, please email gill.drury@spw.org or call +44 207 976 8070.