The Ideas Partnership

Born British and trained in London as a teacher, I moved to Kosovo in 2006 and twelve years later was given Kosovan citizenship by Presidential decree. In 2010 I co-founded the prize-winning Kosovan non-profit The Ideas Partnership supporting under-served communities, particularly of trash-pickers. I am also the owner of the prize-winning Sapune social enterprise offering training and employment to women from these communities. As a writer and public speaker (to over 250 British groups) I have used my storytelling skills to share stories from Kosovo in four published books, articles for BBC Radio and UK print media, through blogging, and training others to tell these stories in ways that bring about change, in free 1:1 mentoring and monthly storytelling webinars. In 2016 the President of Kosovo awarded me the Mother Teresa medal for humanitarian work and in 2017 the British Prime Minister named me a 'point of light' for volunteering.

The Ideas Partnership wants a future where all Kosovars have education and where under-served communities like those of the Roma, Ashkali and Egyptians can advocate for their needs and rights.

To do this we've engaged volunteers (from these communities and from across Kosovo and abroad) and individual donors. Our model is based on Maya Angelou's appeal, 'when you learn, teach; when you get, give.'

Particularly transformational programmes we work on are:

*bursary programmes offering adults the chance for evening classes to get high school diplomas, or students the chance of university, in exchange for 'paying forward' their opportunity in weekly community voluntary work

*'Little Social Worker' and 'Little Teacher' groups engaging young people to become future community leaders tackling early marriage and educational discrimination .

This elevates humanity through two-way relationships built between individual donors and the changemakers they support, and the role models emerging from our programme.

When only 4% of a community complete compulsory schooling, the impact on every other area of life is catastrophic - low levels of employment, a high chance of exploitation, poor health choices. Among the Roma, Ashkali and Egyptians we work with in Kosovo the barriers to full participation in education result in tragic child mortality (of 1000 live births, 41 babies don't make it to their first birthday, in comparison to a figure of 12/1000 in the wider population) and are both cause and effect of the trend in early marriage (in one survey of our target community, two thirds of girls were 'married' illegally under the age of 18 and 1/3 under the age of 16. None continued education after marriage).

We work to ensure children are educated, to grow community activists and leaders to advocate for children's rights, and to educate parents.

We recognize that achieving our long-term goal requires holistic practical
immediate support as well. We support children with school supplies, and transport to classes during winter. We support parents with adult literacy classes (c.80 moms every week), and ante-natal and parenting classes.

Our social enterprise gives training and employment to 17 mothers who make a
range of handcraft products. Their participation in the project is
dependent on their children not going begging or trash-picking, and
attending school.

Our transformational advocacy work focuses on two areas - creating a new cadre of professionals who are from the communities we serve, and who are therefore well-placed to understand how best to tackle sensitive cultural practices such as child marriage. We've created a group of teenage 'Little Social Workers' trained by a social worker from the community whom we supported with a bursary to complete his training. From a parallel group of 'Little Teachers' the first is now completing her second year of university teacher training. These Little Teachers help with weekly activities for youngsters from their community at our center.

We work with Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian communities in Kosovo, in four municipalities. Most of these families have at least one member who is a trash-picker and levels of education are low - particularly for women.

Our staff of 27 includes 13 are from the communities we serve. The communities are also represented on our decision-making Council of Members. We've made sure that key projects are led by young women from the community. This, as well as day-to-day consultation, ensures that the voice and needs of the community are heard in project planning and monitoring processes, enabling us to course-correct where necessary. This year will be the the first time that our social enterprise will be co-led by a woman from the community.

Impact can be seen in quantitative data on increased school registrations and employment. We've also been able to see impact in stories of individual and group acts of leadership and generational change - like the kid who was out of school when our project started 11 years ago and is now old enough to have a child of his own who attends our pre-school and is set for a full and successful journey through school.

As can be seen from the data above, the Roma, Ashkali and Egyptians of Kosovo have traditionally been left behind. Our work with these communities is focused on providing opportunities for people from these communities.

The relationships we build with our supporters, volunteers and donors relate to the second dimension of the Elevate Prize.

Our work also relates to the Prize's third dimension because of the crucial advocacy element. We don't just help people in need; we don't even only help people in need to help themselves; we help those in need to help others in need.

In 2010 I found myself in the Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian neighborhood of Fushe Kosove where I met Gjelane, a 9-year-old girl who was not at school because the school had told her she was 'too late'. I challenged this policy, first in the school, and then when they refused to change their position, at the Ministry, and offered to teach the girl to prepare her to take her place in school. She asked whether 'some of my friends can come.' Thus we discovered that there were hundreds of children in her situation and with a group of volunteers I began regular teaching for them and lobbying to change the school's policy.

Many of the barriers to the children being welcomed in the school came from the attitudes of school staff and I realized the importance of having the community represented there.

Gjelane was later 'married' underage, marking an end to any further education for her. We used the understandings from her story, and the trust built with others in the community from this organic beginning as a starting point to explore wider issues and to shape The Ideas Partnership's program.

I'm a teacher by training so it makes me mad to hear schools saying what they said to Gjelane - that she was 'too late' for education at the age of 9. But you don't have to be a teacher to be mad at that - anyone with a passion for social justice would do something to change such unfairness.

That was my inspiration to act, but if no-one else had engaged in the issue it would have been impossible to keep motivated. Passion is fuelled by having others around with the same commitment to the values and the practical goals of getting a community into school. When you're supported by people from the community then the 'wind beneath your wings' is even greater. Seeing the huge number of volunteers (enough to make us the third largest volunteer organisation in Kosovo) willing to give their time and expertise helps keep each of us going.

And then we saw that we were making a difference. We saw children in school, children we'd taught setting up their own community organizations, children we'd taught going on to train as teachers themselves... Then of course you want to keep on with the work.

I am a trained teacher with a Master's and experience in professional development. This has definitely helped as expertise in knowing how to identify quality programs and practical interventions ensuring children succeed at school. It's also given me belief and experience in how individuals can change and grow.

I'd been in Kosovo for 4 years before I visited the community where The Ideas Partnership started work. I wish I hadn't waited so long, but it meant that by the time I was engaging in these issues I spoke fluent Albanian and had a network of contacts to help me with volunteering and lobbying to change the policies keeping children out of school.

I also used my storytelling skills, beginning the www.gettinggjelanetoschool.wor... blog. I've since expanded the blog into a book that's reached thousands more people who have given their skills and money to support us.

Each success we have breeds further success as we've tried to use a reflective approach to identify the lessons we learn from successful initiatives. For example, when the Little Teachers project resulted in the first girl from the community training to be a teacher, we used the same approach to create a Little Social Workers group.

A decade of working with this community has also created strong trust. I spend a significant part of every week in direct contact via phone or home visits with individual members of the community to know the reality of how things are changing and what more they say is needed.

Our project started from a meeting between me and a 9-year-old Ashkali girl who told me she wanted to go to school but that the school wouldn't accept her. Gjelane was a representative of the over 600 children we've since registered for school, the focus of the blog I wrote about our work, and the way that many people understood the issues and were moved to help.

It was therefore particularly upsetting when Gjelane was 'married' underage. I felt a personal sense of failure in not having protected her, as well as frustration at the wasted opportunity in her curtailed education.

However, I also learned from this encounter with the reality of girls' lives in this community and as a result we started new initiatives:

*the teenage 'Little Social Workers' group set the goal of training to be social workers in the future, so that state institutions could deal with early marriage more sensitively

*Girls' Club (attended by c.50 girls a week) empowering girls about their rights and options

*research on early marriage (finding that 2/3 of girls were 'married' illegally under the age of 18, and 1/3 under the age of 16) enabling us to call for further support.

My approach aspires to be of servant-leadership, so the examples I'm proudest of achieving are of the empowerment of others. I'm proud of the Executive Directors we've employed in our non-profit - the three young women who started out as part-time administrative staff but with mentoring from me and the culture of professional development and empowerment I've set in the organization, as well as their own significant drive and skills, rose to lead our program. I'm proud of the members of the community we've supported with bursaries or through our projects who have gone on to become servant-leaders themselves - e.g. setting up a non-profit, becoming a Deputy Minister, a member of the Municipal Assembly, a nurse or a teacher. I'm proud of the young women from the community whom, when I was Executive Director, I supported to lead specific projects.

I'm proud that when our new purpose-built center was being designed and the community was asked to give it a name, they proposed calling it by my name, though I'm also proud that we found a name to show that it is a center where a whole team works, not just one person.

Several features of our work are innovative. One is the focus on supporting people in need to help others in need (see our Theory of Change below). Another element that is innovative is the social business, Sapune, which offers training and employment to women from excluded communities on condition that their children go to school instead of begging or trash-picking, and thus breaks the cycle of poverty.

Our theory of change is that as well as helping people in need we also help people in need to help themselves and help people in need to help others in need. If we achieve this then every action has a multiplier effect supporting one individual empowers them to pass it on, and reinforces their dignity and sense of agency, instead of identifying them merely as recipients. We know that with this philosophy the receivers of today will become the givers of tomorrow.

In practical terms this means that we give direct aid (e.g. baby packs, medical support) but we put more focus on initiatives that enable people to help themselves - particularly through education, learning about ways to support their family's health, and the work of the social enterprise, Sapune which offers training and employment to 17 women who can then support their families.

Even more, we prioritize initiatives where people in need are encouraged to help others in their community in need - passing on the education they've had if they're bursary recipients, or even, for example, if they're children who are members of our Robotics Club who have a prized chance to learn programming and coding with our 6 robots on condition that they then teach younger children what they've learned. Our Little Teachers and Little Social Workers groups work in a similar way.

When people in need take charge of the solutions facing their communities we believe they identify appropriate programs that are more likely to succeed.

We know that the success of all our initiatives is based on personal relationships and trust which is why our theory of change incorporates incremental changes in services, but a model that has global transformational potential.

We currently serve 825 people.

In a year's time we intend to expand that number to 1000 people directly affected.

If we can secure the funding we would like to increase our services in 3 of our 4 existing municipalities to be as comprehensive as in our largest project, and to take on a new municipality.

In 5 years' time we thus expect to directly serve 2185 people annually.

The Ideas Partnership is a model for what is possible with the support of volunteers and private donors in empowering people from communities of need to get educated and organized and to advocate. Many of the organization's achievements depend on solid relationships of trust with local communities, which are built up slowly over years. We do plan to expand, offering an increased range of services in municipalities where we currently work, and in one additional municipality. but we don't want to do so exponentially as we believe that doing so would threaten the basis for our success.

Meanwhile, as an individual and the co-founder of The Ideas Partnership I feel the drive to share with a wider audience the strategies and techniques that can enable other social changemakers to achieve more. This desire to be a multiplier is why I have started my pro-bono mentoring of other non-profit leaders, and my free monthly webinars particularly on storytelling for people making positive social change. Over the next year I plan to expand this further, specifically with a podcast telling stories of social change and also by mentoring young people in Kosovo to tell stories to help with dealing with the country's past. I want to do face-to-face training of larger groups and build an online course on storytelling for social change.

Thus we will offer a multiplier effect in sharing the 'how' of what we do, while keeping realistic and grounded in the 'what' we do.

Both personally on my journey to sharing my skills and experiences more widely with other changemakers, and for The Ideas Partnership organization, the primary barriers which exist are financial. In order for me to work pro-bono with people who need my support in getting the story of their work to those who can help, I need to be able to fund myself. And for our non-profit we are in constant search of funding. In both cases this has the double effect of reducing our ability to dream and, on a daily basis. of taking up time in writing grant applications or seeking support in other ways. The situation is made worse (of course for everyone) by COVID-19 and its economic impact on our donors, meaning we have decreased supply of support at just the time when those we work with have increased demand for this support.

We will continue to do what we always do, which is to hustle!

We know that the better we get at telling the story of the need that exists, and the more people we reach - through blogs, social media, podcasts, giving talks to groups etc. - the more chance of us being in the right place when resources become available.

We also know that continuing to do what we do well is the best inspiration for people to support us, so we work hard at keeping staff morale high - even in times of pandemic - and holding onto our values and our vision. We model best practice in the ways we behave: transparency, courtesy, fairness, work ethic, gratitude, praise.

We know that the characteristics of being:

Caring

Conscientious

Clever

Curious

Creative

serve us best in times of plenty as well as in times when resources are scarce and we use the last two in particular to look for new approaches in a new context.

We keep ourselves motivated by creating ways for all our staff to be reminded of those whom our organization serves to inform all decisions.

We are in a partnership with Kosovo's autism charity and People in Need for a project training our staff as trainers in local schools on inclusive education.

We are in an Erasmus Plus partnership project with the Carpe Diem non-profit from Croatia for a Human Rights Education project called HERO.

We have a partnership with the AECOM Foundation and AECOM who are supporting us with pro bono engineering and architectural expertise for the building of our new community center.

We have partnership agreements signed with three of the municipalities where we work as well as with public kindergartens and schools.

We also have a partnership with the UNVolunteers office in Kosovo and for over a year we have benefited from their program offering placements for individuals from under-represented groups in our organization.

We offer:

*pre-school education (2 municipalities)

*extracurricular education (3 municipalities)

*education for children out of school (1 municipality)

*support in accessing the labor market through training, income-generating projects and job finding (4 municipalities)

*ante-natal support (2 municipalities)

*Girls' Club and Boys' Club tackling early marriage (1 municipality)

*women's literacy classes (2 municipalities)

*parenting classes (2 municipalities)

*physiotherapy for children with disabilities (1 municipality)

*Little Teachers initiative (2 municipalities)

*bursary program (2 municipalities)

*support in accessing social services (4 municipalities)

These services have come at the request of the communities and are all in the service of helping people in need to help themselves.

We have been supported by a total of 829 individual donors since our
inception. 57 of these are regular donors, giving each month (an average
of £56.50). We need to reach out to a wider pool of recurring
individual donors to give us stability going forward.

We also need to attract more corporate partnerships. Over the last year we have had a significant corporate partnership with engineering giant, AECOM, and prizewinning London architects Weston Williamson with pro-bono support for the building of our new community center. We have also received a grant towards the building of the center. We know that we could develop more corporate partnerships of this type, although the model is less common in Kosovo. We are looking for ways to do this through our networks.

We continue to apply for grants. In the past we have been successful (with grants from Save the Children, the US Embassy, Unicef, the British Embassy, the Finnish Embassy, the Dutch Embassy, the EU, the Austrian Development Agency, People in Need, Terre des Hommes, UN Women, UN Volunteers, the Danish Refugee Council, the Bill Cook Foundation, the Souter Trust and others) but the competition continues to increase.

An EU project covers $6000 per year of our core costs

As below, we need $74 000 in order to continue with our work this year. We are waiting on 26 grant applications so we are hopeful of achieving this.

To offer the core services we currently offer requires $140 000 per year. We have committed individual donors who support our work with around $60 000 per year. In addition we have a grant which covers $6000 of our core costs per year. For the remaining $74 000 per year we are working on applying for grants.

This is a frightening position to be in but not an unfamiliar one - we have never had our budget secured more than 6 months in advance, and have to date always managed to cover our costs through success in our grant applications and the generosity of our private donors.

There are two things I want to achieve for The Ideas Partnership. One is the organization's financial sustainability, and the Elevate Prize money would ensure this sustainability and ability to expand in the medium term. The mentoring and support for me and - via me - for colleagues would ensure we are skilled in strategies for financial sustainability in the longer-term.

The second thing is wanting to share our successes. We have achieved some extraordinary transformation for communities whom other organizations and state institutions have given up on. Large organizations have come with clipboards and large budgets and failed to make any difference in the lives of families whom our approach has nurtured to economic independence and a future where they can make choices about their lives.

Our model of supporting people in need to help others in need is one which is rarely heard and even more rarely implemented, but we have examples of what it looks like in practice.

We've developed some powerful strategies for telling these stories. We also have proven ways of ensuring that our donors feel connected to the transformations they are making possible.

We are motivated to share all of these so that while our work in Kosovo continues to expand gently, the approaches whose power we have proved through our decade of work can be shared exponentially in order to make other organizations stronger and more effective. With support from the Elevate Prize we can share these strategies further and with more impact.

Funding and revenue: as above, we need support in finding ways to reach new regular donors, and in building corporate partnerships, particularly when Kosovo has limited traditions of this.

Talent recruitment: We have no recruitment expertise within our staff or board, beyond what we have developed ourselves in the organization.

Coaching: Having benefited from coaching at various points in my career I know the power it has not only to move you forward, but also to empower you with finding your own solutions to challenges, making you a stronger leader. Now that I'm mentoring others I know that 'filling my cup' would be of benefit not only to me.

Monitoring: is an area we have identified for improvement. As our team and projects expand we want to make sure we have full data to inform our decisions and the systems that suit a larger organization