Summit Foundation (SUFO)

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Uganda has one of the youngest populations in the world with the youths and women 18-30 years currently estimated at 6,588,000 (21.9%) by the Uganda Bureau of Statistics. This scenario presents a mix of opportunities and threats to the country’s socio-economic and political environment and directly affects the ongoing political and economic transitions. 

Politically, Uganda’s transition is about consolidation of multi-party democracy, and economically, is the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and poverty reduction beside other important areas of concern.

Youths and women in Uganda are faced with enormous challenges that inhibit them from actively participating in the governance and development processes. Unemployment, under-employment and poverty levels have continued to increase and have remained at extremely high levels despite considerable efforts to promote sustainable development by the government and international development agencies. Unemployment statistics indicate that the youths and women are four times more likely to be unemployed compared to their adult counterparts; even when they are employed, they join the lower working categories of employees.

A critical strategy for overcoming the above challenges is setting in motion processes that would lead to increased active youths and women’s participation in the governance and development processes of the country. While youths and women are the greatest beneficiaries of good governance and the MDGs, they often are the worst victims of bad governance and its impact.

The energy, numbers and intellectual capacity of the youths and women can be tapped and channeled in such a way that it contributes to accelerate development. The government of Uganda recognizes this and has made some headway in making legal and administrative provisions for supporting youths and women participation in development especially by recognizing them as a special interest groups with representation at different levels in formal structures.

Nonetheless, more needs to be done especially in empowering the youths and women to become agents of change in their respective communities. 

ORGANIZATIONAL BACKGROUND
 
The Summit Foundation (SUFO) is a youth – centered development organization working in the realms of public policy and public administration, human rights and equality, social justice and democratic governance, and research and capacity building of the youths and women nationwide.

It was founded in 2008 in Gulu, Northern Uganda. SUFO works to create links between Uganda’s youths and women and a wider global society in order to improve the quality of public policy and public administration; human rights and human equality; expand trade, free markets and poverty eradication; and deepen social justice and democratic governance.
 
VISION: A prosperous society where everybody enjoys basic human rights and equality, social justice and democratic governance.
 
MISSION: To promote the rights of the youth and women to equal social, political and economic opportunities and empower them through research, advocacy and capacity building for effective poverty eradication nationwide.
 
OBJECTIVES: We have nine objectives to achieve our vision. Amongst them we include:

To increase youths and women’s access to educational opportunities on basic human rights, labor rights, consumer rights, social justice and democratic governance.

STRATEGIC DIRECTION

SUFO attaches particular importance to building local democracy, and understanding power dynamics and how these shape public policy, human rights and equality, social justice and democratic governance outcomes; and this is an explicit recognition that policy is not neutral.  Thus one of the key roles we play is to elucidate the original comparative research and critical analysis of existing literature on the public policy in Uganda, and consolidate democracy in Uganda’s development processes by focusing our research, advocacy and capacity building activities around five thematic areas: - building local democratic governance; public policy advocacy; consumer rights awareness and empowerment; human rights, equality and social justice; and trade, free markets and poverty eradication.

 
PROGRAM AREAS
 
Summit Policy Centre - Research, Advocacy and Capacity Building (SPC – RACB) Programme 

Organizational Development Effectiveness and Governance (ODEG) Programme 

Information Dissemination through various publications, dialogues and conferences.

 
PROJECTS COMPLETED INCLUDE:
 
Consumer Empowerment for Active Citizenship and Good Governance Project, Phase 1.

Amongst other achievements for this project, over 20 Young Consumer Clubs were also established in schools and within communities across Gulu District.

The second phase of the project has begun, and its building on the achievements registered during the first phase.

Youth Empowerment Project
This project is supported by Uganda Youth Network with funding from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED-USA) and works to increase meaningful youth participation in the decentralization processed, and promotion of democracy and good governance. 

National Youth Manifesto Popularization Project
Prior to the 2011 General Elections in Uganda, several youth-serving civil society organizations in the country gathered and developed a National youth Manifesto with the help of a number of donor partners. The national youth manifesto gave guidance on the aspirations of the Ugandan youths ahead of the elections and asked political parties to adopt the same to improve the conditions of young people in Uganda when they get elected to office.

SUFO took the mandate to popularize the youth manifesto in Northern Uganda, and the project registered marked success as all political parties endorsed the youth demands, and most importantly, the ruling party which subsequently won the presidential and parliamentary election, also integrated the youth demands in their own manifesto.

OPERATING PRINCIPLES & STRATEGIES

In order to address issues of human rights, social justice and democratic governance relevantly, SUFO:-
v  Builds the capacities of youths and women institutions working on human rights, democracy and social justice at the grassroots.
v  Delivers high quality research to facilitate effective advocacy and dialogues.
v  Disseminates information through publications: policy briefs, books, websites, annual reports, meetings/workshops and conferences.
v  Forms partnerships with policymakers, civil society, donors and scholars.
v  Prioritize problematic issues
v  Uses local knowledge to build useful, extensive networks.
 

 
GOVERNANCE AND ADMINISTRATION

SUFO has a three-tier structure: A General Assembly made up of the foundation’s members; seven elected Board of Directors’ members and the Executive Director as a non-voting member; and a Secretariat headed by the Executive Director.

The General Assembly meets annually to, among other things, approve annual programmes and finance reports. The Board of Directors’ members, who are expected to meet twice annually, are tenured for three years. Tenures are renewable twice. The Board President is the chief executive officer of the foundation and is the head of the governance and strategic policy oversight.

Presently, the Secretariat includes the Executive Director, a Programme Manager, an Accountant & Administration Officer, Project Officers, a Research and M&E Officer, and an Office Assistant. They manage the Consumer Advice Point, Policy Resource Centre and all SUFO project interventions, and from time to time, a number of student interns who act as research and/or projects implementation assist the core team. Staffing is directly related to the level of project funding. The Executive Director is the chief accounting officer of the foundation and is in-charge of management of all finances, projects, strategic direction and administrative functions of the foundation.

SUFO’S COMPETITIVE EDGE

SUFO’s value-addition, by comparison with other similar institutions is as follows:

Unique expertise and strength in both comparative research and capacity building of youth and women CSOs and policy makers in the area of democracy, social justice, consumer rights, free markets and contemporary governance plus the challenges facing the Uganda;

SUFO is one of the few youth organizations in Uganda that links social research directly to policy advocacy and outcomes;
SUFO’s expertise in policy analysis is growing; we have unique databases on experts in our five focus areas and considerable material/ literature from comparative research.

To accomplish its mandate, SUFO relies on three major resources; its staff, its networks and its budget. However, given the financial resources available, much work has been done with very limited staff through outsourcing and often with the use of interns
 
CHALLENGES
 
Many global and national changes have had a direct bearing on SUFO’s programmes, agenda, role and mandate. While changes may be accompanied by new opportunities, we had challenges, some of which include: -
v  The highly complex, dynamic and uncertain conditions that come with poor environmental policies in transforming societies is still threatening the transfer and survival of the knowledge generated by SUFO, especially as a result of the two decade civil strife which raged on in Northern Uganda.
v  Major changes in political direction of donor countries and consequent changes in their priorities led to marginalization of the work and importance of knowledge based NGOs / CSOs especially those that are critical to on-going internal and external development policies.
v  Foreign donors, tend to dominate the entire space of NGOs/CSOs, sometimes make unreasonable demands and expectations on their donations without necessarily appreciating the difficulties and complexities involved in the transfer of knowledge in the Ugandan context. Such demands pose challenges for SUFO and other similar organizations.
v  Global credit crunch directly led to sharp decrease in accessible funds from developed economies for charities abroad, and this has a direct bearing on SUFO.

Contact: info.sufo@gmail.com

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