ForAfrika: Empowering Africa from Within – A Bold Vision to Impact 20 Million Lives by 2032
“People closest to the problem are closest to the solution…
…but furthest from power and resources.” – Glenn Martin.
ForAfrika might be the best of both worlds – African-based as well as the largest African-led global organization for international aid and development in the world.
Stephanie Guzman, VP of North American Philanthropy, shared that they impacted 4,221,541 people across Africa in 2023 alone. Their next goal? Reaching and impacting 20,000,000 Africans by 2032.
ForAfrika (formerly JAM International) has been working for 40 years to restore the abundance of Africa to its people.
Helping people to thrive, not just survive through assistance with: emergencies, water, food, health, education and economic growth.
Podcast Transcript
Jacob: [00:00:00] Welcome to Impact Stories. I’m here with Stephanie and please introduce yourself
Stephanie: Hi, I’m Stephanie Guzman. I’m the VP of North America of Philanthropy for ForAfrika.
Jacob: Tell me what your organization does to make the world a better place.
Stephanie: ForAfrika has been around 40 years. It was formerly known as JAM Joint Aid Management. We went through a rebranding about three years ago. And ForAfrika is the largest African-led global organization for international aid and development in the world. And we have a goal of reaching and impacting 20,000,000 Africans by 2032. We want to sustainably provide them and not just sustainability, but thrive.
Jacob: On a practical level, what does that actually look like? And what ways are you helping individuals in Africa thrive?
Stephanie: We have different program pillars. We have WASH, which is water sanitation and hygiene. We have emergency response. We have education. We have food security, livelihoods, health and nutrition, and economic empowerment. Some stats on that, last year we [00:01:00] reached over 4 million people across Africa. We reached over 600, 000 people in emergencies, was involved with education with almost 1.5 million people, and we’ve reached over 1.2 million people with food security and livelihoods.
Jacob: What do you attribute your ability to reach so many over so long? Your organization has done this for 40 plus years. What’s been the secret to that success?
Stephanie: I honestly think it’s the fact that it is African-led and that the goal is not just sustainability, but thriving, being consistent. It really started back 40 years ago when there was a famine in Mozambique and the family that started Joint Aid Management, they were tobacco farmers, and they had decided to help with this famine. They loaded up these truckloads of medical supplies and food and they went over to this village in Mozambique, with these truckloads. And many people had starved, and they buried like 300 people that day. Out of that started Joint Aid Management and been a pattern where doors have opened to help in emergency relief. [00:02:00] And then ForAfrika has gone in and been part of the community and started building up an economic empowerment and livelihood and community development. And so our presence has stayed there over the years in different countries. So right now we work in eight different countries and it really started a lot of this out of emergency relief.
Jacob: Why do you think being African-led makes such a difference?
Stephanie: There’s an understanding. It’s kind of like helping people in your own home, nobody knows it better than you because you live there. You are African and you know how to help your community the best. So I think that’s really key, especially with the goals of going past sustainability but thriving. It affects your neighbors and that’s why it’s so effective. It has grown. It’s ambitious goals, but I think we can definitely achieve getting 20 million Africans thriving by 2032.
Jacob: How does thriving look different than surviving or being sustainable?
Stephanie: It’s putting people in a position where they have a livelihood, they have a confidence and they have self respect and they don’t feel marginalized [00:03:00] and they feel like they could accomplish things and accomplish their dreams.
A lot of times in international development, we just want things to be sustainable over time, where people can have water, clean water, and they can have nutrition, medical care. But past that is people’s dreams. We want people to dream, we want them to thrive. We want their children to thrive. We want to change, not just. a family’s life. We want to change the whole family tree, going out generations. And so I think that’s what we look past just being sustainable. We really want people’s dreams to come true and to thrive and change entire family trees in the process.
Jacob: Tell me about your journey and your career. What was sort of that moment where you decided I’m going to focus on making a difference in the world?
Stephanie: It started about 20 years ago. I started with World Vision and initially, I was in people and culture and I was with World Vision about eight or nine years. I had the opportunity to go out into the field and to work different capacities like in Haiti and also in other countries like Lebanon. And Serbia also, I was part of [00:04:00] an emergency refugee relief when Syria had the civil war and everybody was pouring out of Syria and Western Europe had opened its borders. People were just grabbing what they can and walking, literally walking out of Syria. And so in Serbia, we set up emergency relief offices there.
And so from there I went to Operation Blessing, got involved with fundraising, and another level NGO working in multiple countries. And then I went to Kenya Education Fund, as a US director and VP of development Just came over to ForAfrika recently, so still learning the organization, but really happy to be here. It’s a great organization, I’ve heard so many good things about ForAfrika throughout the years. And so it’s a real privilege to work for them.
Jacob: Tell me a bit more about your role, what success looks like for you?
Stephanie: Yeah, my current role is VP of philanthropy for North America. So I’m really focused on institutional funding in the sense of US-based foundations, corporate foundations, and corporations in US and Canada. And so my focus is really around bringing in partnerships with [00:05:00] corporate social sustainability, and also larger foundations and getting involved with our work because we have a great infrastructure set up in 8 different countries in Africa. And we’d love to grow that more and make a greater impact to get us to our goal of 20 million.
Jacob: There’s millions of different options of where to put your dollars, right? Why would they choose ForAfrika over other options?
Stephanie: Being locally led is really important, especially getting in programs. We are based in South Africa, we know the landscape really well, we are on the ground. there’s organizations that have country offices and obviously country managers, but our executive leadership is led from South Africa. And so I think that makes all the difference in the world because the people that are leading this are African.
The Pretorius family that started the organization, Isak Pretorius, who is our president, is African. And so I think he brings a unique perspective of being African and wanting to leave a legacy, wanting his continent to thrive. That’s what brings a uniqueness to us, it’s not just having country managers that [00:06:00] are local. We are being led by a president who is African.
Jacob: What have been some of the milestones or successes that you can point to?
Stephanie: ForAfrika, they’ve been operating since 1984 and starting out just as this family who started the organization and growing, getting involved with, you know, clean water and education and healthcare and hunger and economic opportunities. Just being able to serve millions and grow the programs and to emphasize community involvement and working closely with local partners. I think the impact has been felt a couple generations now, in the 40 years that ForAfrika has been around.
Some of the countries we do work in are South Sudan, Angola, Uganda, Rwanda and South Africa, Mozambique is another one. We are changing generations because we’ve been around so long, it’s Africans serving Africans.
Jacob: If this community were trying to be an advocate for you and connect you with those ideal opportunities, what makes an ideal donor for ForAfrika?
Stephanie: I think for us, we received so much funding from the UN, we really want to get more [00:07:00] involved with foundations and corporations and corporate foundations, family foundations we’re really gearing towards that. We do have donors but we’re kind of this organization that we want to branch outside of governmental grants, really get involved, and become partners.
And so I think those four things would be the ideal funder for us right now. And we’re kind of on this journey of starting that and focusing on that, especially in North America. We do have some foundations that do support us in Canada and the US. But we really want to grow that and we want to really grow our partnerships with corporations also.
For me, my goal financially is to bring in a 5M dollar grant and to also just spread brand awareness in North America, a lot of people have never heard of ForAfrika or even Joint Aid Management. And so I think in time as we’re working through this we want to have an audience, with these corporations and with these foundations that are based here in North America.
Jacob: What are you doing right now to build awareness for ForAfrika in North America?
Stephanie: So we’ve decided to go a couple of routes. One [00:08:00] is to possibly have our own podcast, ForAfrika. And we’re working with our marcom on that. And then the other one is to do LinkedIn live events. And so I think that’s where a lot of professionals and key decision makers and stakeholders hangout is in that LinkedIn space and I’ve had great success with LinkedIn live events.
Taking a half-hour once a month and talking about the impact ForAfrika, and inviting different connections. And it’s a great way for foundations and corporations to look at you as an organization without committing to you because it’s one way. So we’re looking at a focused presence.
Jacob: If someone was interested in learning more, what resources would you point them to?
Stephanie: I would point them to me, then they can go to our website also, which is www.ForAfrika.org and it’s spelled F O R A F R I K A. dot org. And you can go to our website or you can reach me at s.guzman@ForAfrika.org and you can also check us out on our social media on Facebook, just look up our name, or you can check [00:09:00] us out on LinkedIn also.
Jacob: Anything that you want to share before I let you go?
Stephanie: ForAfrika stands on its own. It’s a great organization, it’s doing great work. And I’m looking forward to growing more with the organization and would love to bring foundations and corporations with us along the way.
Jacob: Thank you, Stephanie, and keep up the good work.
Stephanie: Great. Thank you so much, Jacob.
Jacob: Thank you.
Learn more about ISSIMO Story Agency Here