East Africa Community of Practice
The East Africa Community of Practice (CoP) is the truest demonstration of Woven Foundation’s aspiration to embody a partner-centered model focused on local leaders and their organizations. The CoP comprises a group of organizations from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Kenya, and Uganda with long-term partnership commitments from the Woven Foundation.
All of these organizations broaden access to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in some way – through youth empowerment, education, socio-economic strengthening of families, healthcare, societal unification, and peace and reconciliation. The CoP meets regularly, both virtually and in person, to share best practices, challenges, and lessons learned. Working together, the group identifies new strategies and opportunities, creates shared learning experiences, celebrates achievements, and mitigates challenges as the partners advance their unique missions and seek continued growth, impact, and sustainability.


At the outset of the CoP in early 2020, members collaborated to develop organizational capacity assessment pillars: governance, mission, administration, human resource management, project and program management, project and program planning, and financial management and auditing. These pillars provide a framework for the CoP through which members can self-assess strengths and areas for improvement, opportunities for cross-organizational support can be identified, and shared challenges can be surfaced for deeper group work. Woven Foundation regularly meets with and visits CoP members, seeks to make fruitful connections across the CoP, and draws in relevant resources from outside of the CoP.
Now in its fourth year, CoP members actively use this platform to engage in meaningful and authentic communication, build trust among the group, and promote peer knowledge sharing and coaching that, much of the time, sparks new and deeper learning opportunities. Woven Foundation is grateful to CoP members for entrusting us with the opportunity to create this space and for so meaningfully engaging in this collaboration.
