Feminist sub-granting across MENA
Designed and ran participatory sub-granting schemes worth €8M+ for 250+ social enterprises, CSOs and women's-rights organisations. Tools in EN/FR/AR.
Working across Oxfam Italia's Middle East portfolio, I designed the sub-granting architecture that lets the organisation move resources rapidly to local civil-society, social enterprises and women's-rights organisations operating in some of the most constrained funding environments in the world — Yemen, Gaza, the West Bank, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Tunisia.
The system is multilingual by default. Calls for proposals, due-diligence checklists, contracts and reporting templates were built in English, French and Arabic — designed with the assumption that the grantee would not be reading a colonial language for the first time on procurement day. We co-designed evaluation criteria with country-office staff and ran budget conversations as conversations, not interrogations.
Over five years the scheme has moved more than €8M to 250+ partner organisations. It now serves as Oxfam Italia's reference model for community-led sub-granting, and elements have been adapted by colleagues in Latin America and East Africa.
What I delivered
- Multi-language call-for-proposals templates (EN/FR/AR)
- Light-touch due diligence framework for first-time grantees
- Grantee dashboard — financial + narrative tracking
- MEL framework on feminist & participatory principles
- Grantee support package — admin, finance, reporting coaching