Tostan Inc.

“The form 990 was prepared by the outside accountants. A draft of the return was reviewed by senior management and finance committee. The final form 990 was provided to the board of directors before filing with the irs.”

“All employees and board members are asked to annually submit any conflicts of interest in writing. New hires will be asked if there is a conflict and notice will be given to the senior management immediately and board yearly. If a conflict arises, the board of directors determine whether the conflict exists and, if so, the board votes to authorize or reject the transaction or take any other action deemed necessary to address the conflict and protect tostan's best interests. Board members have a duty to disclose any possible conflict of interest. The board of directors determines whether a conflict of interest exists and, if so the board votes to authorize or reject the transaction or take any other action deemed necessary to address the conflict and protect tostan's best interests. Votes will be by a majority vote, without counting the vote of any interested director, even if the disinterested directors are less than a quorum provided that at least one consenting director is disinterested. An interested board member, officer, or staff member will not participate in any discussion or debate of the board of directors, or of any committee or subcommittee in which the subject of discussion is a contract, transaction, or situation in which there may be a perceived or actual conflict of interest. However, they may be present to provide clarifying information in such a discussion or debate unless objected to by any present board or committee member. Anyone in a position to make decisions about spending tostan's resources (i.e., transactions such as purchases contracts) - who also stands to benefit from that decision - has a duty to disclose that conflict as soon as it arises (or becomes apparent); s/he will not participate in any final decisions.”

“The board committee reviews comparable salaries before making any recommendations for senior staff salaries. The process is documented. A review was last conducted in january 2018. The board committee also reviews comparable salaries before making any recommendations for the key employees salaries. The process is documented. Tostan's compensation policy is to pay at the 25th percentile of the market for senior management and towards the 75th percentile for around 589 african staff members in the field.”

“The organization makes its governing documents, conflict of interest policy, and financial statements available to the public upon request.”

“Guinea: tostan worked with 40 communities, with a total of 2,980 participants. Guinea-bissau: tostan worked with 38 communities, with a total of 3,200 participants. Mali: tostan worked with 80 communities, with a total of 7,723 participants. Senegal: tostan worked with 139 communities, with a total of 6,443 participants. The gambia: tostan worked with 30 communities, with a total of 2,619 participants. Total number of african communities hosting tostan's programs in 2020: 327. Total number of community empowerment program participants in in the 5 countries: 22,965. 78.8% of participants were women and girls. Direct cep participants engaged 18,563 indirect learners (see organized diffusion, below). Tostan also conducted and worked with community partners to conduct a wide range of additional programming activities, reaching many hundreds more communities. Please see below for a summary of tostan's main programming efforts across all programs in 2020. Covid-related activities: in addition to tostan's traditional cep programming tostan responded to covid-19 through a range of programmatic efforts. In march 2020, due to the covid-19 pandemic, tostan made the difficult decision to suspend all field activities in its five focus countries (gambia, guinea, guinea-bissau, mali, senegal) for the duration of the emergency. All field staff had to leave the partner communities where they were living and return home. Tostan rapidly implemented a covid-19 response contingency plan aimed at providing community members with life-saving information on the virus, delivered in the local language and in a culturally appropriate manner. The ultimate goal of the contingency plan was to curb the virus spread and to protect lives through the measures outlined below: 1. Developed and distributed covid-19 informational brochures in 13 languages tostan developed two brochures with key covid-19 prevention messages. Illustrations depicted local housing, practices, and dress and advice was tailored to address any social norms that may be affected by the virus. One brochure offers culturally relevant information and illustrations about the virus transmission and prevention; and one discussing an islamic perspective on the virus. Both versions of the brochures have been widely distributed to partner communities and are also available free to download from tostan's website. 2. Broadcasted radio programs to inform tostan partner communities in addition to providing basic information on coronavirus transmission and prevention, tostan radio programs covered topics such as community-government collaboration during the pandemic, religious texts that reinforce public health measures, and education in the time of covid. 3. Collected data to inform programming working with idinsight, a global analytics organization, tostan gathered data to better understand the knowledge, attitudes, and practices around covid in the areas where tostan is working. This information will inform future work and also help in better understanding what makes communities resilient. 4. Pivoted the entire tostan organization to working remotely covid-19 is reshaping the way the world works. Although field operations were paused, tostan staff continued to work effectively using digital tools. We were able to keep all of our staff fully employed. 5. Continued to convene thought leaders on timely topics tostan actively engaged new audiences and strengthened the organization's position as a key thought leader in prominent online speaking events such as the world skoll forum, wise panel, world humanitarian forum hybrid summit, and african philanthropy forum. Tostan's ceo, elena bonometti, also hosted a three part webinar series featuring systems change in the face of covid, including the strategies tostan implemented in the field. The following summarize tostan's efforts at country level. Gambia: delivered 86 radio programs in three languages, distributed 9,200 brochures in four languages, provided”

“The cep encourages community members to share the knowledge they gain about health and human rights with their social networks, and communities often launch specific initiatives to improve child and maternal health in their villages. Communities raise awareness on the importance of vaccinations as well as taking action to improve community hygiene and preventing diseases such as malaria. Environment: our cep equips community members with the knowledge and skills to find creative and sustainable solutions to environmental problems. During the cep, participants learn how diseases are transmitted and how this is linked to unhygienic practices that can pollute the environment. Our respectful and non-judgmental approach promotes community discussion about the environment. As a result, communities lead initiatives to make their environments more hygienic in order to protect the community's health. Communities also use their problem solving skills to implement environmental initiatives to address their particular needs. Economic growth: the final phase of the cep, the aawde, includes class sessions on basic literacy, math, project management, and budgeting skills that help participants successfully plan and launch small businesses in their communities. We also provide small community development grants to cmcs. The cmcs often use these grants to establish a rotating microcredit fund that helps community members, particularly women, with the investment they need to start small businesses, invest in agriculture, or take on other income-generating activities. The cmc also encourages community members to save and plan for the future. Cross-cutting issues: in addition, our work addresses cross-cutting themes important for community well-being. These issues include child protection, the reinforcement of parental practices, the empowerment of women and girls, and female genital cutting (fgc). We believe that these cross-cutting issues require holistic and human rights-based solutions, and our program aims to strengthen positive social norms while addressing those which lead to harmful practices. Fgc: the human rights-based cep allows community members to draw their own conclusions about fgc and lead their own movements for change. In the cep class sessions on human rights, participants learn about their right to health and the right to be free from all forms of violence. They also discuss the responsibilities they share to protect these rights in their community. In sessions on health, they learn about the potential, immediate, and long-term harmful consequences of the practice and discuss ways to prevent these health problems in the future. Rather than blaming or criticizing, we encourage dialogue around these and other practices that communities feel hinder their vision for their community's development. Participants and community management committee (cmc) members speak with friends and family as well as travel to other communities to raise awareness about what they have learned. Through this process, many communities decide to end fgc together, some without having directly participated in our classes. Child protection: through our cep module on child protection, cmcs are trained to address the deep social norms and practices that negatively affect children. The child protection module training is for cmc members in communities that have implemented the cep. The module helps build consensus around human rights and children's rights while building awareness of the various moral, social, and legal norms that affect children. Instead of focusing on immediate relief, the module helps communities address the deep social norms and practices that are at the source of these issues affecting children. It emphasizes the importance of education and introduces ideas for how communities can work together to protect their children. The child protection module strengthens the capacity of communities to provide protection for children and prevent violat”

“Empowerment of women and girls: women and girls make up more than half of cep participants. During our program, women develop leadership skills, engage in dialogue, and demonstrate their ability to make important decisions for themselves and their families, showing how important they are to their community's development. We also work to engage men and boys in the cep, encouraging them to participate in discussions about human rights. Men and women work together to promote equality and develop new social norms around respecting the human rights and dignity of all. We encourage women to take on leadership roles in their communities. Community management committees: as part of the cep, each participating community democratically selects a cmc to coordinate development activities. Each cmc has 17 members, nine of whom must be women. Each committee is made up of several commissions, including health, environment, child protection, education, income-generating activities, and social mobilization, which continue to lead development activities and promote human rights-based development long after the program has finished. Organized diffusion: through organized diffusion, the impact of the tostan program is multiplied. Each class member commits to sharing their knowledge with at least one person within their family and wider community, permitting new ideas to be spread quickly through the community and beyond. Each partner community adopts another community within their social network, opening dialogue and allowing neighboring or intramarrying communities to make decisions as one group. Our work often stretches across country borders to create impacts on a regional scale, such as the international movement to abandon female genital cutting (fgc) and child/forced marriage. Tostan also trains dedicated social mobilization teams that visit communities that have never participated in the community empowerment program to reinforce information shared through organized diffusion activities on fgc, health and religion, allowing communities to ask questions and begin to explore these issues in greater depth and across age and gender divisions. In 2020 these social mobilization teams working both during and after the cep visited hundreds of communities and reached thousands of people. Community grants: community development grants are small grants, usually between $300 and $1,000, provided to cmcs to help fund community development projects as well as to establish cmc-run microcredit funds. The rotating microcredit funds set up by the cmcs help villagers, particularly women, obtain the investment they need to start small businesses, invest in agriculture, or take on other income-generating activities. The cmcs operate the microcredit fund based on a group-lending, revolving-funds system. The cmc works together to set the interest rate and the length of the loans they will grant. Strong community ties help encourage a high repayment rate. The interest from these funds is then used to expand the number of loans available, undertake community projects, or establish a solidarity fund for children's educational expenses and emergency medical needs. Community development grants give cmcs and individual community members the opportunity to put the literacy, numeracy, and project management knowledge they gained during the cep into practice. These grants provide a way for community members to participate in income-generating activities, allowing them to provide for their families and sustainably invest in their communities. I in 2020 tostan supported these grants in partnership with 30 communities in the gambia, 40 in guinea, 38 in guinea-bissau, 80 in mali and 138 in senegal. In total 6,465 people accessed community development funds to support their income generating activities. Mobile phone for literacy and development (mpld) module: the module focuses on using mobile phone technology, specifically sms text messaging, as a tool to reinforce literacy”

“B. Training and replication tostan has built training programs and partnership models designed to share the organization's content, approach, methodology and strategy with a range of potential partners. Each year the tostan training center (the ttc welcomes international development practitioners and grassroots leaders from all over the world to senegal to learn about tostan's model. Ngo leaders, human rights activists and academics, religious leaders and others come together to learn and exchange on tostan's program content, human rights approach, participatory methodology and organized diffusion strategy. Participants explore the theories and practices of holistic community-led development, visit villages that have ended fgc and child marriage after participating in the community empowerment program, and discuss educational strategies for changing deeply entrenched social norms with staff working in the field. They also participate in human rights sessions drawn from the tostan program and cover important lessons learned from over 27 years of implementation. In 2020 21 people from 11 countries (zimbabwe, malawi, kenya, sweden, zambia, denmark, great britain, ethiopia, nepal, guinea bissau, italy) attended tostan trainings. By the end of 2020, tostan training center had reached a total of 607 alumni from 48 countries and also created networks within each training cohort using whatsapp groups. In 2020, tostan also continued its recent training and sharing efforts in nigeria, where it is building long-term partnerships to support the scale of well-being. The organization not only conducted a series of covid-adapted trainings but also advanced partnerships with local organizations, networks and leaders, the ford foundation and the bill and melinda gates foundation, the world bank and the government of nigeria. Major 2020 activities in nigeria included: - a two-week scoping exercise, engaging 14 civil society organizations (csos) and religious leader networks (rlns) in both abuja and lagos, in order to identify potential networks/partners. - two orientation seminars, organized to sensitize csos and rlns on tostan's model, reaching 20 csos and 12 rlns network leaders. - initial in-person and virtual consultations to aid planning of activities to explore a future partnership between the world bank, tostan and nfwp project staff. These seminars enabled participants to learn and experience the principles and methodology of tostan's proven model. Training and replication models: since 2018 tostan has undertaken a scale modeling process to provide the organization with concrete tools and best practices for scaling community wellbeing. In 2020 this strategic scale planning effort focused on the organization's training and replication pathway, with particular attention paid toward how the organization may work with affiliated organizations in the future. C. Global influence and recognition: tostan is increasingly seeking ways in which to exchange with and influence the global community that supports the emergence of community well-being. Through participation in global and regional conferences as well as membership in networks of thought-leaders and partners, tostan was able to position itself as a leader in the global conversation on systems change. In 2020 tostan hosted a range of webinars with community members, partners, and global thought leaders. The organization and its leadership and programs were featured in many news articles in leading news agencies, referenced in academic publications. The organization also also participated in a wide range of conferences at local and global level. These articles and events are documented and available via tostan's website. 2021, 2022, and beyond: future perspectives. At the close of 2020 tostan's annual plan for 2021 includes continued programmatic investments in all three of the pathways tostan is following in order to scale community well-being: direct implementation, training and replicat”

“The organization also has additional staff of 729 located in africa.”

“Professional fees: program service expenses 414,640. Management and general expenses 196,033. Fundraising expenses 109,407. Total expenses 720,080.”

“Exchange rate gain/loss 143,962.”