We are a platform to promote good giving stories from across Africa. We seek to demonstrate that Africans in their collective always give towards the public good. We also mobilise resources that can be deployed to any cause as we have always done. The current pandemic caused by COVID 19 has heightened the need to showcase our responses but giving even outside disasters is a common thread that joins all cultures and contexts in Africa. Like a well (kisima), we want to be a go to source to quickly quench the thirst brought by different challenges in the continent. In particular, when a disaster occurs, there are no mechanisms to urgently fund early responses. This needs to change and with the involvement of everyone in Africa, we can easily and quickly make sure that there is a continental framework to finance disaster management on an urgent basis and other social problems. We can all make resources readily available to address Africa’s challenges.

CAPSI initiated this initiative to highlight African giving through positive story telling across the African continent. We will host conversations aimed at mobilising resources for the public good. This campaign was inspired the several research findings from CAPSI’s research projects. In the main, research confirms that Africans are forever ready to give to different causes. Telling these stories will inspire others to do the same.

The first component of the initiative is the repository of good and positive stories of giving, solidarity, sharing, caring, helping, resilience and reciprocity. These are stories of every day experiences with kindness, compassion and humility. These are stories of hope. These are stories of charity and transformation. These are stories of social justice. We are inviting Africans wherever they are based to give of their stories and deposit them through the initiative. These can be blogs, vlogs, videos, voice notes, research articles and reports, documentaries and pictures. Let each and every one of us be a story teller.

The second component is the Fund. This is a campaign to raise funds and resources towards continental causes. The causes will be rotated over time but givers will be given options to choose from. CAPSI and its partners will not receive direct funding from givers on behalf of the causes identified. Instead, each cause will have details of the beneficiary that include the name of the organisation, its management and governance, banking details and how the resources will be used. CAPSI will only campaign for causes that have been processed through a thorough due diligence process, with the requirement for beneficiaries to report back to givers on the usage of the funding raised. The Fund will help Africans respond to their problems on time but with some flexibility. If all of us in Africa gave one dollar annually, we would raise enough to address most of the challenges that come up due to a pandemic or disaster. Of course some of us can give more.