Spark Microgrants

Spark MicroGrants partners with rural poor communities enabling them to design, implement and manage their own impact project such as schools, farms and health centers. Spark offers a novel approach to community-led development through proactive, catalytic, community organizing and granting.  Their democratic, community-based approach to international development is built on the belief that communities in poverty understand the problems that need to be solved but lack resources and capacity to do so.

Spark catalyzes rural poor villages into action. Local Spark facilitators reach out to infrastructure-poor villages and engage them in a six-month planning process where community members design and implement their own social impact project such as latrines, schools and farms. Spark then awards a one-time microgrant of up to $10,000 so the community can realize their projects. Communities not only launch a project of their choice, but gain the capacity and confidence to continue driving their own local change. Spark provides the tools and support needed to build and sustain local decision-making capacity and empowers under-represented community members – such as women and girls – to take active leadership roles.

Beyond the direct impact of each project, Spark is changing how decisions are made, who makes them (e.g., increasing female leadership), and how people engage in local communities, well beyond the single Spark-funded project. To date Spark has partnered with over 100 communities in Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi.