Following our AGM I've been trying to write a good "about" page for Dadamac Foundation. I'd appreciate feedback on my attempt. Here it is:
About Dadamac Foundation
Dadamac Foundation has always been placed equally in three, very different, kinds of locations - and that is our unique strength. Our work is to do with education, livelihoods, welfare and development. Our projects are long-term with an emphasis on capacity building, sustainability, and sharing good practice.
Our locations are:
- In Africa
- Where projects happen in response to local need, and are led by local people who have strong connections with the UK.
- In the UK
- Where the African projects are supported in various ways.
- On the Internet
- Where people from Dadamac can work as a team despite the distances that separate us. We also share information from our various locations and learn from each other.
Our roots
Dadamac Foundation grew from a project which began in 2004 and involved John Dada (Director of Fantsuam Foundation in Nigeria) and me (Pamela McLean, based in the UK but doing "working holidays" in Nigeria).
That collaborative project required effective two-way communication. Much of it had to be done via the Internet, despite many practical difficulties (mainly due to infrastructure problems in Nigeria). In addition to the core group in Nigeria and UK the project included an online support goup scattered across the globe. The lessons of that project led to our current approach and to the formation of Dadamac Foundationt.
It's across the world - anyone can be involved
The work of Dadamac Foundation, with its ongoing UK-Africa connections, could never have happened without the Internet, and it is also thanks to the Internet that people can be involved in our work whether on not they live in our key locations in Africa or the UK.
Our work is people-focused and is deeply embedded in local communities, but it also has a global perspective. There are opportunities for people to get involved on many levels and in various ways, by making a donation, sharing expertise, volunteering to give time for various tasks (online or face-to-face) or collaborating (as an organisation) in joint projects. Contact us for more details.
We're person to person, not top-down
Dadamac Foundation's work is unique. (It is very different to traditional top-down projects where there is a clear distinction between "donors" and "beneficiaries" and very little dialogue between the two.) Our projects sit comfortably in the "organisationally flat" world of the Internet - a world of two-way, world-wide communication (increasingly familiar to many people through the use of social media and mobile phones). This means that whatever your involvement with Dadamac Foundation you can be confident that the projects you support are relevant to local situations and needs, and are based firmly in reality.
We do practical things - and share what works.
In Dadamac Foundation we emphasise sharing good practice, learning from each other, and cross-cultural collaboration. We believe that the best way to solve problems effectively in the long term is with a mixture of shared knowledge (global knowledge and local knowledge) plus a combination of resources (local resources and external resources). We have an approach where people work patiently together to find solutions that work properly on the ground, and we have an ethos of sharing what is learned.
Invitation
We invite you to get involved in our work by giving some time or a donation, or simply by spreading the word about Dadamac Foundation. For more information please contact us.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.