Twilio.org is the social impact arm of Twilio, with a mission to ignite change at the local and global levels by connecting social impact organisations, software engineers and the power of the Twilio platform. In late 2019, Twilio.org awarded Africa’s Voices with a grant to scale and deploy life-saving resources through a two-way SMS platform.
The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation has been making grants since 1967 to help solve social and environmental problems around the world. In November 2015, the Foundation awarded a three-year grant to Africa’s Voices which was renewed again in 2018.
The David and Elaine Potter Foundation is a charitable grant-giving foundation established in 1999 to encourage a stronger and fairer society. The Foundation awarded grants to Africa’s Voices in 2015, 2016 and 2018.
In 2018, the Mai Family Foundation awarded Africa’s Voices with an operational support grant.
“Africa’s Voices reaches voices of ordinary people and ensures they can be heard in a skillful way. It enables people to contribute to decisions that affect their lives.” – Lord Cairns, a foundational funder of Africa’s Voices
In May 2017, we won a Shuttleworth Foundation Flash Grant, which we have used for innovations in data analysis and management. Dr. Sharath Srinivasan, representing Africa’s Voices, was nominated by Gavin Weale of Livity Africa.
“Africa’s Voices work helps to amplify the voices of hard-to-reach communities and is proof positive of research as a force for good” – Dame Dianne Thompson, on awarding Africa’s Voices the Market Research Society’s President’s Medal 2016.
Researchers at the Centre of Governance and Human Rights successfully secured funding from the Cambridge-Africa Alborada Research Fund which allowed Dr Sharath Srinivasan to expand the Africa’s Voices pilot and the PiMA project.
In 2014, the ESRC Impact Acceleration Account at the University of Cambridge supported Africa’s Voices’ Dr Claudia Abreu Lopes to spend three months at the IBM Research Africa Lab in Nairobi. Her work focused on the role of social sciences to provide an interpretative framework when understanding big data.
In 2012, the Centre of Governance and Human Rights was awarded ESRC-DFID research funding for an 18-month politics and interactive media (PiMA) project on how African broadcast media are using new ICTs to gather public opinion. Research findings informed our toolkit for radio hosts.
The Isaac Newton Trust was established in 1988 by Trinity College, Cambridge to promote learning, research and education at the University of Cambridge. The Trust awarded a grant to the Centre of Governance and Human Rights — supporting the foundational research of Africa’s Voices.
The Centre of Governance and Human Rights was awarded funding from the University of Cambridge Vice-Chancellor’s Discretionary Fund, to support Africa’s Voices spin-out into a social enterprise.
