WE BELIEVE IN CHANGE
The Initiative for Community Advancement (ICA) is a Community Foundation (CF) that has as its main aim the promotion of community philanthropy in rural communities. Webelief that community philanthropy is a fantastic yet often unused way to get rural people involved in leading and contributing towards their own development.
Community foundations (CFs) are instruments of civil society designed to pool donations into a coordinated investment and grant making facility dedicated primarily to the social improvement of a given place. Community foundations are a global phenomenon with 1700 existing around the world.
CFs encourages “philanthropy” which is broadly defined to mean “the love for humanity”. Philanthropy has distinguishing characteristics separate from charity; not all charity is philanthropy, or vice versa, though there is a recognized degree of overlap in practice. A difference commonly cited is that charity aims to relieve the pain of a particular social problem, whereas philanthropy attempts to address the root cause of the problem—the difference between the proverbial gift of a fish to a hungry person, versus teaching them how to fish.
The ICA therefore utilize the vehicle of the Community Foundation to give local communities a mechanism through which they can give towards their own communities and the causes that they care and are concerned about the most. The people have the power to transform their own conditions.
There is no exercise better for the heart than reaching down and lifting people up.
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