The month in pictures: November

Women in Mtwara, a rural area of southern Tanzania, join discussions about how to strengthen sexual and reproductive health practices amongst young women and girls in their community. AKF is supporting this community-led action by collaborating with local civil society organisations who engage Kungwis – teachers of topics pertaining to sexual health in traditional Swahili culture.

At 52 years old, Munakka (right) has been widowed for over decade and has struggled to earn an income to support herself and her family. Last year, Munakka joined a local women’s group, where she produces and sells natural compost, fertilisers and pesticides using local resources. Her daughter-in-law Sughri (left), who is also widowed, is a member of the group too. Whilst creating reliable jobs for marginalised women in the community, these products also aid farmers in transitioning to chemical-free farming, part of AKF’s efforts to promote low carbon agriculture in rural India. 

In the outskirts of Maputo, young women have painted a mural to represent their participation in a community-led initiative, offering psychosocial support to victims of gender-based violence. The mural is on the wall of the community centre where they regularly meet to share their experiences and learn to cook and sew, so that they can sell products at the market and begin to rebuild their lives. AKF is supporting this group through Juntos! – a civil society programme working to build a more self-reliant and cohesive civil society in Mozambique. 

AKF’s flagship education programme, Schools2030, hosted a three-day design framing workshop in Mombasa. Teachers, youth development partners, civil society organisations, and government officials from Mombasa and Lamu County came together to devise next year’s ‘design challenges’. These challenges are issues currently being faced by school communities in coastal Kenya – the solutions to which will be designed by teachers with Schools2030’s support. 

Teachers in Tajikistan recently completed two months of intensive Human-Centred Design (HCD) workshops through Schools2030. During the workshops, teachers created and presented the innovations they have designed for improved teaching and learning practices to other teachers from across Tajikistan’s four regions. Here, maths teacher, Jalolova Sarvinoz (left) is demonstrating her prototype, which is an alternative classroom, where students are arranged in groups to encourage greater engagement and collaboration. 

Students at Mikindani Secondary School in Zanzibar are fighting climate change by planting a microforest at their school compound. This is part of AKF’s pilot climate education initiative – Play, Pluralism and the Planet. It aims to enable learners, teachers and communities to meaningfully contribute at the cross-section of climate action and education innovation. 

In Aleppo, two girls practice skipping during a ‘mini-Olympics’ for young people in their community. The event was organised by the Adolescent Girls’ Education in Crisis Initiative (AGENCI), implemented by AKF and with funding from the Government of Canada in partnership with the World University Service of Canada. As well as education initiatives, AGENCI works to bring communities together through events, strengthening social cohesion against a backdrop of instability. 

Participants of a Human-Centred Design (HCD) Bootcamp in northern Pakistan walk at the foot of the mountains to meet with community members. The bootcamp was focused on finding locally led solutions to malnutrition amongst the region’s remote mountain communities. The community visits were a crucial part of the process, so that AKF staff and community leaders could better understand household level needs related to nutrition and dietary diversity. Learn more about our HCD work here. 

Children at a community-based early childhood development (ECD) centre in Shohin district play together. Through a pilot initiative part of AKF’s Local Impact project, communities have been able to renovate their ECD centres and fill them with quality learning materials, books and toys. The centres are attended by children aged three to six, who now have a safe space to play, learn, and prepare for primary school. 

The first group of entrepreneurs pose for a photo during their first session of ‘Bloom Your Biz’ – a new entrepreneurship initiative led by AKF in Portugal, in partnership with Virtual Accelerate. Bloom Your Biz is dedicated to supporting the growth of startups, fostering scalability, and advocating innovation.