Pharo Foundation

From 2011 to 2016, we started as a grant-making organisation, with projects chosen on the basis of the personal inclinations and passions of our founders. Early partnerships through grant-making helped us learn how to ‘do development’ through cooperation with grantees, who shared an in-depth knowledge of their field with us.

We partnered with Amref East Africa, Action Aid, African Education Trust, Somaliland Nursing and Midwifery Association, Windle Trust International, Medical Aid Films, Action Aid, and VSO, amongst many. Part of our current expertise relates back to the knowledge built through these early partnerships. In education, African Education Trust and Windle Trust partnerships were of particular significance. With African Education Trust, besides funding the education of girls in Somaliland, Puntland and Somalia, we were the first to lead and organise the automation of data on leaving certificate results at a national level in South Sudan. With Windle Trust International, we placed 50 African refugees over four rounds at UK universities with full scholarships for postgraduate study. In health, our partnership with Medical Aid Films also stands out. They made short films on key medical operations and procedures, which local doctors and midwives could download on their smartphones and which were dubbed in the local language, thereby providing state-of-the-art medical training to health practitioners without access.