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Accountability Lab

@accountlab

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Building a new generation of active citizens and responsible leaders around the world! Our campaigns include #integrityicon and #voice2rep

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Who benefits from Mali’s mining wealth – and what say do communities have in decisions affecting their lives?

For communities living alongside extraction, access to information means being able to ask practical questions: who is mining nearby, what protections apply to land and water, and how are revenues being used?

Our latest blog explores these questions through the work of @accountabilitylab_mali and its accountapreneurs – from sharing mining information and documenting environmental concerns to supporting participation.

Swipe through for some of their initiatives, then read the full blog for more on connecting transparency with community priorities.

🔗 Link in bio!

@diaouhabibou | @paul_marie_coulibaly | Thè Ly | @ina_b_h | @beguele_cissouma | @nanekia1 | @animatrice_aichou | @dr.sidy.coulibaly | Ousmane Békaye Niambélé by @accountlab

How can funding translate into lasting change at the community level? Drawing on observations from recent monitoring visits across Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka under the @ddisouthasia program, our colleague @asif_farooqui79, Director of Programs at @accountlabpk, reflects on his interactions with community-based organizations.

He explores how these organizations use local knowledge, trusted relationships, and modest grants to strengthen citizen engagement and public accountability. Asif also highlights how lasting relationships with citizens and institutions, as well as continued use of technology beyond a project’s formal completion, can create value that conventional indicators may not capture.

Asif reflects on the challenges these organizations face and the growing importance of flexible funding, practical support, and accountability systems that respond to local realities. Read how grantmaking can be more effective to help community-based organizations sustain and support their impact. Link in our bio! by @accountlab

📍 Build back better

Shrinking development funding has revealed the structural weaknesses of a top-down funding framework. It has also created an opportunity to reorganise models around frontline actors for long-term resilience.

The latest edition of Beyond the Sandbox, we explore how decentralising power through innovative grantmaking can create more equitable terms resulting in more appropriate and agile solutions.

In her piece, Building Resilience through Transitions: A New Model for Democracy Support, Accountability Lab Co-CEO Jean Scrimgeour encourages more flexible, people-centred approaches that are grounded in political reality rather than idealised assumptions.

📮 Read the latest edition and subscribe at the link in our bio! by @accountlab

Every community has changemakers worth discovering !

From inspiring young people to standing up for rights, strengthening local democracy, and driving community-led change, civil society organizations are making a difference every day. But many of these incredible stories still remain untold.

At #KAYAPALAT, we believe every changemaker deserves to be seen, heard, and celebrated ! 💚

That’s why we’re excited to amplify the #CivilSocietyWayfinder campaign initiated by @accountlab , an international word-of-mouth campaign celebrating local civil society organizations that are leading the way toward a more just, inclusive, and democratic world.

Now, it’s your turn !

Know a CSO that inspires you ? An organization creating real change in its community ? Don’t keep their story to yourself. #Nominate them and help put their work on the map !

🧭 Nominate a changemaker : https://bit.ly/44G3df4

#Share this post, tag inspiring organizations, and help us discover the changemakers who deserve to be recognized !

Let’s make local impact visible. Let’s amplify the voices that matter. Let’s find the Wayfinders !

#CivilSocietyWayfinder #AccountabilityLab #Kayapalat #CivilSociety #LocalChangemakers #YouthLeadership by @accountlab

MEET THE SPEAKER: Odeh Friday

We are pleased to welcome Odeh Friday, Country Director of Accountability Lab Nigeria, as a speaker at the Nigeria Youth Leadership & Ecosystem Convening 2026.

With over 14 years of experience in humanitarian and development work, he champions inclusive governance, social accountability, environmental justice, and human rights.

📅 4–5 November 2026
📍 Abuja, Nigeria | Hybrid

🔗 Register to attend: https://nigeriayouthfund.org/media-event/

Join us as we explore pathways to stronger youth leadership and Nigeria’s democratic and development futures.

#NYFFat5 #YouthLeadership #GoodGovernance #YouthDevelopment

NYFF is a project implemented by @leapafrica with funding from MacArthur Foundation, @fordfoundation and Luminate by @accountlab

🪧🇰🇪 The promise of the public purse and what it can – and should – buy is one of the critical issues of Gen Z movements. In France over the past month, high school students have demanded better public education services, affordable cost of living, and work prospects post-study.

In 2024, young Kenyans already struggling with a high cost of living, opposed increased taxes on especially basic foods, goods and services such as bread, sanitary products and mobile money transfers.

Kenyan climate justice advocate and feminist organizer Felicitus Okoko works primarily with girls, women and children, and the 2024 “Reject Finance Bill” protests were the first time she participated in demonstrations specifically around governance and accountability.

The proposed taxes on menstrual products was where governance and gender activism intersected for Felicitus, and was one of many experiences with governance that highlights a clear need for youth-driven accountability mechanisms.

“What people could lobby for during campaign periods, and keeping track of what we lobbied for, what commitments were made, what changes have happened, and what is hindering that change?”

#BridgingTheGap
#GenZ
#GenZMovement
#Kenya by @accountlab

People affected by disasters know the challenges of recovery firsthand. How can their experiences help shape the decisions that follow?

@accountlabnpl has collaborated with Dr Nimesh Dhungana, Senior Lecturer in Disasters and Global Health at @officialuom, alongside communities and activists, to explore this question.

Drawing on experiences of Nepal’s 2015 earthquakes, COVID-19 and the 2024 floods, the research helped develop the Just Recovery framework, putting human rights, social justice and community participation at the heart of rebuilding.

Through public hearings, community discussions and policy dialogues, people are sharing their concerns and helping shape recovery decisions. Lessons are also being shared across our network in Liberia, Pakistan and South Africa.

👓 Read the feature – link in our bio! by @accountlab

📍We're talking stability by decentralising power, prioritising proximate solutions and strengthening collaborative efforts. Efforts that may have once been considered nice-to-haves are now vital-to-haves.

This edition of Beyond the Sandbox shares models and concrete examples of funding that invests in listening, trust, and flexibility, to support the entrenchment of knowledge in frontline communities that carry missions further than a project timeline.

So, come along for:
🟡 Building resilience through transitions - A new model for democracy support
🟡 Reimagining microgrants - Bridging local civic infrastructure in Nepal
🟡 Shifting power - Making a grant or solving a problem?
🟡 Beyond “youth inclusion” - Lessons from Nepal’s Gen Z organisers

Our learning newsletter is an offering to a sector finding its way at a time of – seemingly constant – flux. And where change is the only constant, sharing knowledge as we build, is crucial.

Read and subscribe at the link in our bio! by @accountlab

🪧🇳🇵 Diwakar (@diwakaruprety) founded Kayapalat, a youth-led, non-profit organization in Janakpur in Madhesh Province, 123km outside Kathmandu in what he calls the “civic desert”.

The organization works to bring young people's perspectives into climate justice, democracy, governance and gender justice. Diwakar stresses that support is needed to carry these perspectives into political influence and policy decisions made in the capital. He emphasies the importance of open and frank dialogue between government and people to ensure shared priorities, collaborative solutions and ongoing accountability.

"If this is done, democracy can actually breathe, its spirit can become strong, and the dialogues we have between us will reach a better place; otherwise, we will have to endure conflicts and resentments."

#BridgingTheGap
#GenZ
#GenZMovement
#Nepal by @accountlab

How can a funder's exit be responsible and help build a resilient civil society?

Our Co-CEO, Cheri-Leigh Erasmus and Eszter Filippinyi of @taicollaborative, explore this question in “Leaving with Care: Responsible Funder Exits.”

When a funder exits, the consequences can extend beyond the loss of funding. Organizations may lose staff, important programs may close, and communities can lose services. But a funder’s departure does not have to be an unavoidable crisis.

The authors highlight practical ways to make exits more responsible:

📌 Give organizations time to plan: Communicate decisions early, provide clear timelines, and give organizations space to ask questions and make informed decisions.
📌 Support a collective approach: Introduce organizations to potential funders, engage in field-level cooperation, and invest in coordinated fundraising and collaboration.
📌 Build a resilient civil society: Provide flexible, multiyear funding and support independent financial infrastructure while encouraging collaboration that preserves shared knowledge, relationships, and local leadership.

Responsible exits are not just about managing the end of a grant. As the authors put it, “The goal should be to protect the work and the people the organization exists to serve.”

Read more about some promising practices that can help organizations navigate funding transitions through the link in our bio. by @accountlab

📣 Do you know any organizations working to defend democracy through voter education and access, civic engagement, government transparency and accountability, press freedom, or the protection of human rights and institutions? If so, nominations are open for the Get Loud Award: Democracy Defenders!

Along with actress Kerry Washington (@kerrywashington), the Elevate Prize Foundation (@elevateprize) is looking for global organizations working to protect, strengthen, and reimagine democracy.

The Elevate Prize Get Loud Award provides funding each month to impactful community-based organizations around the world, helping them advance their work. This month, they are awarding $25,000 to one organization working to defend and strengthen democracy. Nominations close on Friday, October 16.

🔗 Submit a nomination through the link in our bio.

Eligibility: Organizations must have a charity designation in their respective country and an annual revenue under $1 million. by @accountlab

At this year’s UNGA, we joined the Ban Ki-moon Foundation, Civic Strength Partners and UNDP to convene leaders from civil society, philanthropy, and multilateral and development organizations. We met to shift the conversation about civil society’s future from diagnosis to actionable steps that strengthen the ecosystems we work in and proactively build resilient civic infrastructure.

Participants identified concrete building blocks across the three domains —organizational, financial, and relational. We discussed how CSOs are shrinking and redefining roles, with implications for knowledge retention. Financially, flows have declined, philanthropy is shifting towards new sectors, and new, non-Western funding sources are emerging. Relationally, trust is strained when networks are too informal to hold up in a crisis or when top-down, enforced formality overtakes relationships.

Read our takeouts via the link in our bio. by @accountlab