How we choose our project partners
Tzedek has an Overseas Projects Team made up of around 10 committed volunteers. They receive applications and make the decisions as to who to fund.
Tzedek focuses funding in two "cluster zones" of West Bengal, India, and Northern Ghana. However we consider outstanding projects from any region with absolute poverty. Each project is assessed with the following guidance in mind.
- Make a positive contribution to the ability of the community to support itself
- Include the people who are benefiting from the project in designing, running and evaluating it
- Are appropriate to the needs and wishes of the community
- Are local in scale and may increase the size of their activities gradually as they succeed. We do not expect applications for grants of more than 30% of an organisation's previous annual turnover.
- Create a situation where the benefits of the project continue after Tzedek’s funding has ended, for the individual beneficiaries and/or the organisation itself
- Make use of technology appropriate to the region and the project, with appropriate safety precautions
- Use local resources as much as they can
- Develop the skills of the community
- Seek to minimize harm to the environment, safeguarding resources and capacity for future generations
- Have defined endpoints - Tzedek does not fund running costs for ongoing projects, for example salaries for a school, food for an orphanage
Projects usually involve:
- Education and training (literacy and numeracy, vocational training, informal education, education on environmental issues e.g. deforestation)
- Production (agriculture, livestock, small scale manufacturing)
- Finance (microfinance loans, co-operatives, helping people access formal financial institutions, kick-start loans)
- Building social infrastructure and providing services (health education, housing, water supply, waste schemes, converting to renewable energy sources)
The kind of organisations we fund:
- Work regardless of the race, religion, gender or ability of those benefiting from the project
- Work in poor communities
- Select those who benefit from the projects according to need
- Have some experience of running and learning from previous projects, even if they were small
- Are committed to monitoring and evaluating their work and using the lessons learned in the future
- Have the capacity to form a professional partnership with Tzedek, ensuring that grants are used according to the proposals made
- Are non-governmental organizations or community groups
- Have links with other similar groups in the region
- Do not become dependent on Tzedek for funding
| The Overseas Projects Team All Tzedek grant functions are carried out by the OPT. The OPT is made up of about 10 committed volunteers who meet every six weeks. |
