Conectando Caminos is a mentoring and accompaniment program for partner organizations of the Migration program of Hispanics In Philanthropy (HIP), whose objective is institutional strengthening through digital transformation, financial sustainability, and organizational adaptability.
CONTEXT:
After the first year of work (2021) in partnership with Wingu, HIP, and its partnered organizations that were developing Comunidad M, we understood that the next step needed to deepen the process was to accompany the organizations in their organizational strengthening by creating spaces to mentor on digital transformation, financial sustainability, and organizational adaptability.
In 2022 this mentoring process was realized through the accompaniment of the following organizations: Asociación Pop Noj, Asociación Enlaces Nicaragüenses, Casa Refugiados, Las Vanders, Comparte por una vida Colombia, Espacio Migrante, Derechos Humanos Integrales en Acción, A.C, Trans Queer Pueblo, Casa del Migrante de Matamoros y Asociación Lambda.
UNDERTAKING THE CHALLENGE:
Although the Community M and Knowledge Path projects were already established, HIP identified the need to deepen the accompaniment of the organizations that were receiving funds from the migration program to improve their organizational and digital resilience.
METHODOLOGICAL DESIGN:
Based on these challenges, we created a program of accompaniment set to span over 10 months of work, distributed into 2 months of design, convocation, selection, and 8 months of accompaniment with the 10 organizations, all divided into 2 stages:
First stage: accompaniment of 10 partner organizations (at least 3 for each work axis) for 3 months to accompany the change in a process tailored to each organization.
Second stage: according to the commitment and progress in the previous stage, we select 6 organizations to accompany them for an additional 6 months in a deeper transformation.
Every organization was accompanied by a mentoring team made up of professionals from various disciplines in accordance to the needed areas of work. These teams held one-on-one meetings with the organizations, during which they first outlined their needs, then developed a plan of action that addresses the identified challenges. These meetings served to provide information, tools, and guidelines for each organization to use.
And in the year 2023, we will be continuing with 10 more organizations.
ACCOMPANIMENT AND RESULTS:
In these learning spaces, distinct necessities were noted in respect to three principles:
Organizational Adaptability: Burn out, high levels of rotation, a need to work in equilibrium, delegation and adaptive planning.
Financial Sustainability: Development of development strategies to attract new donors, design and execute new strategies of income generation.
Digital Transformation: Digital security, gestion of information, digital marketing.
DHIA Organization: During the last two years, DHIA experienced a very large organizational growth, so its monitoring process focused on data management and process improvement.
DHIA's direct assistance team is in charge of capturing information on users. Previously, this process also involved calling on other areas of the organization. Now, this team can create their own cases and the rest of the areas follow up on each case in order to better accompany each of the migrants they support.
Organization Casa de refugiados: Casa Refugiados faced a clear challenge: it needed to reorganize and strengthen its different work teams after a period of internal structural changes in the Board of Directors and the team that accompanies the organization on a day-to-day basis.
Although Casa Refugiados went through several changes, its members emphasize that what they learned and developed throughout the process allowed them to organize their internal processes and teams. This, in turn, allowed them to respond to different internal problems and, above all, to maximize the positive impact that the organization generates with the migrant population that approaches the Casa in search of information or humanitarian assistance.
Pop'Noj Association: Within the framework of Project M's Connecting Pathways initiative, Kubadili accompanied the Pop No'j Association in the creation of a new financial sustainability strategy that contemplates the generation of its own income.
Pop No'j was able to successfully define the pillars to elaborate a sustainability proposal outside the traditional donation schemes. And, after that, they began to propose different actions to operationalize the plan: offering workshops and talks, generating knowledge that can be shared with universities, institutes and government agencies, and producing agendas and organizers that have the aesthetic stamp of the Mayan culture.
RESULTS IN THE VOICE OF THE PARTICIPANTS:
"We liked this accompaniment because it has given us tools that can be adapted to our processes and activities without affecting the objective."
"Appreciate the accompaniment that has been provided to us, as well as the opportunity to connect with others in the M-Community meetings"
"Appreciate the opportunity to learn with you and enrich us in the sharing"
Watch the video, stories of transformation: Enlaces Nicaragüenses:
RESULTS IN NUMBERS:
6 organizations accompanied in strengthening processes during the 2 phases of accompaniment.
4 countries of the Americas participated in Phase II.
Satisfaction of 4.5/5 by the organizations that went through the 2 phases of accompaniment.
6 stories of transformation developed from the achievements obtained in the strengthening processes.
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