The six NGOs who will benefit from the Fund the Front Line campaign have a proven track record of effectiveness in working with disadvantaged children in Africa, the Middle East and the Pacific. As winners of the 2012 Stars Impact Awards, they have already been rigorously assessed for the quality of their work, and they will take the lead in deciding how to use the money raised through this campaign.
Fund the Front Line aims to raise awareness amongst the wider public of how important unrestricted funding is in enabling these small frontline organisations to be responsive and flexible in their work. This is evident from the different ways these organisations have used the $100,000 they were given last year as Impact Award winners.
Education as a Vaccine Against HIV/Aids (EVA), the Nigeria-based NGO, is using part of its money to build a permanent office building that will enable the group to become self-sustaining.
"We pay a lot of money every year for office space in Abuja, and with this money we can build our own office to house ourselves. It will also generate income, as we can rent parts of it out to other organisations," says Fadekemi Akinfaderin-Agarau, executive director at EVA.
Big-ticket items like this are hard to get funding for, but it's the type of investment that can carry organisations forward. Another of last year's winners, Ethiopia-based Action for Integrated Sustainable Development Association, is buying a four-wheel drive vehicle to help it reach the remote pastoralist communities it serves by building water points, vaccinating livestock and reducing the incidence of female genital mutilation. As the money raised through Fund the Front Line is also unrestricted, some of the organisations are welcoming the opportunity to innovate.
"We have a number of ideas for the Fund the Front Line money," says Anjana Raza, chief operating officer at Developments in Literacy which does outreach work to support girls' education in Pakistan. "We're going to fund a basket of activities. We'll be expanding ongoing projects, but there will also be a couple of pilot programmes, one of which I think will be working with government schools."
Similarly, EVA plans to try something new by piloting a programme targeting children aged 6-13 who may be victims of sexual exploitation and child labour, particularly in conflict areas in Nigeria.
"Children are the the primary victims of conflict, so we want to see how we can strengthen our child-protection programmes," says Akinfaderin-Agarau. "Typically, most funders don't want you to test something, but with development work you need to try different models and see what works."
For the Laura Vicuña Foundation in the Philippines, Fund the Front Line will mean an opportunity to invest in a safe home for abused and exploited girls in Manila. It is an ambitious project which will address the recovery needs of a particularly vulnerable group, and yet building projects are often incredibly difficult to raise funds for. The centre will also act as a resource facility for the community, families, schools and parishes on issues related to child protection, building community-based prevention mechanisms to further reduce cases of abuse.
In some cases, unrestricted funding allows small NGOs to serve segments of the community who would otherwise fall through the gaps. Lebanon-based organisation Naba'a, which works with children in Palestinian refugee camps and remote Lebanese communities, plans to fund early-years programmes for very young children, which it hasn't been able to do from other sources of funding.
"Children under five aren't included within the UN Relief and Works Agency education programme, and Palestinian families are unable to send their children to kindergarten due to the high costs," says Yasser Daoud, executive director at Naba'a. "None of the donors working in Lebanon are interested. This makes very young children among the most marginalised of groups."
Equally, many frontline organisations urgently need to invest in organisational capacity, but have difficulty getting funding for it. The Alola Foundation, based in Timor-Leste, tackles infant and maternal mortality through women's groups, as well as providing breastfeeding support. Money raised from Fund the Front Line will go towards frontline work, as well as on redefining the organisation's strategy for the next four years.
That kind of capacity-building work is very difficult to attract money for, according to Raza from Developments in Literacy.
"The whole idea of strengthening core teams and core capacity is not a part of the majority of restricted funds," she says. "Unrestricted funding is the best kind, because you can change the allocation as needs emerge or shift, and that really allows the funding to be used effectively."
Having already been recognised for the quality of their work, the six NGOs taking part in Fund the Front Line hope the campaign will now persuade the general public to fund them directly.
"Stars has done the due diligence on us," says Akinfaderin-Agarau. "The public may sometimes have the impression that development needs international organisations driving it, but there are people on the ground who understand the context and issues. If you really want to bring about change, you have to support the organisations that live the reality of their communities on a daily basis."
