Here are some of the year-by-year highlights of our work:
1994: South-North exchanges. CIVA brought Stan and Mari Thekaekara to the UK to explore poverty in the UK and link this issues and ideas in international development. As a result Oxfam involved Stan centrally in their UK Poverty programme, and Stan is now a Trustee of Oxfam GB, the first "beneficiary" from the South to have achieved this. Some of other exchanges looked at housing, peace-building and young Asian girls growing up in a modern world.
1995: International philanthropy. CIVA undertook a study for the Charities Aid Foundation on the voluntary sector in India which led to the setting up of CAF India, and the spreading of CAF internationally. CIVA also encourages the development of fundraising in the South through publications and training.
1996: Homeless self-help. With an innovation grant from Crisis and in partnership with the National Homeless Alliance, CIVA established StreetLife to promote volunteering and organise speak-outs for homeless people. This led to the establishment of Groundswell, the self-help forum for homeless people.
1997: Village literacy. With a grant from the National Lottery, CIVA developed a programme of "village publishing" to develop and distribute books for rural readers with limited literacy skills alongside a programme of village library development. The latest development in this programme is to set up "Village Reading Circles" where women can explore some of the issues and solutions for their lives and futures.
1998: Telephone helplines for streetchildren. CIVA developed a replication strategy for ChildLine India, and obtained a lottery grant to expand the scheme from Mumbai (Bombay) across India working in partnership with the Government of India. Today, ChildLine India operates in over 50 cities and an international agency, Child Helpline International, has been set up in Amsterdam to promote children's helplines across the world.
1999: Young grantmakers. CIVA established YouthBank UK to enable young people to make grants to projects led by young people. The initial pilot programme involved 6 projects across the UK with the development overseen by a consortium of 5 national youth agencies. Today, there are approximately 70 YouthBanks all around the UK, and others starting in Eastern Europe, South Asia and Africa. The project is now under the full control of a Board of young people.
2000: Social entrepreneurship. Michael Norton assembled the consortium which became the successful bidder for the £100 million Millennium Legacy to create an endowment for making awards to individuals. This led to the creation of UnLtd, which makes over 1,000 awards each year to individuals with ideas for changing their community, society or the world.
2001: Youth Volunteering. Michael Norton led the International year of Volunteers youth programme, which included the RSA Young Leaders Awards which was developed by CIVA. This has now become the Young Achiever Awards run by the Young Achievers Trust, which is a partnership of UnLtd, YouthNet and CIVA.
2002: International youth activism. CIVA established the "Young People Change the World!" international summer school for young activists, which was organised entirely by young people. This was held at Atlantic College in Wales, and became an annual event. In 2005, the summer school was held in Pune, in West India. And in 2006, the fifth and last summer school was held in Gloucestershire
2003: Street children's banking. In partnership with Butterflies, a Delhi-based NGO working with street children and with funding from Comic Relief, CIVA supported the development of street children's banking in South Asia. The banks are run by the children themselves, and provide a safe place for their money, encourage saving and make loans for micro-enterprises. By 2012, the project was operational in the South Asian region with 29 main branches and 77 sub branches in India, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Sri Lanka, and is now run in partnership with ChildHope.
2004: 365 ways to change the world. Based on the idea that lots of people can do lots of often quite small things which seek to address the problems of the world, and together these can have a significant impact, CIVA researched 365 issues and practical actions that people can take to change the world, and these are being disseminated through a publication, on a website and by offering content to other websites. The book has been published all over the world in local editions including in the USA, Canada, Australia, South Africa, India as well as the UK, and it has been translated into other languages including Mandarin, Greek and Italian. Two further books have been produced that encourage activism: The Everyday Activist (2007) and Click2Change (2012).
2005: A pilot village reading programme was established in Andhra Pradesh to encourage reading and enable highly disadvantaged people to access information with the potential to change their lives. This project is now being scaled up to cover several villages in two clusters. In 2010, after reading a book on profitable mushroom growing, a cluster of villages have now started growing mushrooms for protein and profit.
2006: MyBnk launched with support from the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation. This innovative project enables young people to operate their own savings and lending bank in a school, foyer or community setting. MyBnk has won numerous awards and its director, Lily Lapenna, has been awarded an Ashoka Fellowship and is now a Schwab Foundation Global Young Leader.
2007:CIVA worked on two UK council housing estates to encourage residents to adopt more carbon neutral lifestyles, working in partnership with East Housing in Newham and Knowle West Media Centre in Bristol. The Knowle West project has continued to develop and residents have helped spread the word more widely.
Also in 2007, CIVA launched The Otehsa Project UK, based on a Canadian programme where young people take the message of sustainable living in a fairer world out to schools and communities through bicycle tours.
2008: UnLtd India, a foundation for social entrepreneurs in India was launched to invest in individuals to come up with solutions for better communities and to help eliminate poverty. This was based on UnLtd in the UK, and is linked to a workspace hub and a social enterprise organising Journeys for Change. In 2010, CIVA helped launch UnLtd in Cape Town, South Africa, and plans are being developed for a Hong Kong affiliate.
2009: FoodCycle was launched to encourage young people to volunteer to cook surplus and donated food using donated kitchen to feed people in need, such as the homeless and refugees. FoodCycle is now developing restaurants using surplus food as ingredients, either permanently or as occasional pop-ups, and is exploring other creative ways of addressing food waste.
2010: Buzzbnkwas launched as a crowdfunding platform specifically for social ventures, to help raise donations, loans and supporters. In 2011, Buzzbnk was awarded an Innovation in Giving Award by NESTA to assist in its further development.
2011:The International Centre for Social Franchising was launched to facilitate the spreading of successful social ventures nationally and internationally. Besides advising specific projects, the ICSF has been working with Big Society Capital to create a fund for making investments in the franchising process, with a major pharma company to explore the franchising of health projects into Africa, and with the London School of Economics, NESTA and the Bertelsmann Foundation to create a Toolkit to assist the process.
2012: Two Innovation Labs were launched in Hackney (in partnership with Hackney Homes and Rolemop) and in Victoria (in partnership with Peabody) to create community spaces to encourage innovation, creativity, solutions to unemployment and to the problems of the community. A low cost model for running these is being developed, to assist in their sustainability, and the programme will be further developed in partnership with Clear Village.
