AKF sees an effective civil society as key to improving the overall quality of life. The need for a strong civil society is especially true in developing countries, where public and private services and systems often lack the resources and ability to reach all citizens, leaving the most vulnerable behind.

In Mozambique, with approximately 50% of the population in poverty and a gender equality rank of 123/130 countries, the government recognises that CSOs are a major resource in the country, particularly in providing key interventions in health, education, housing, access to drinking water, employment, advocacy, and many others. CSOs play a key role in advocating for and delivering services, as well as ensuring access to information and knowledge about people’s rights.

In order to deliver services to those in need, especially the most vulnerable, CSOs must be effective and sustainable. However, major resource constraints in Mozambique, including a lack of reliable, long-term international funding, has led to instability for CSOs that threatens their ability to reach people in a timely and effective way.  

Due to the need to compete to raise funds, as well as many other challenges, Mozambican CSOs have mainly operated in isolation from each other. This means they lose out on the benefits of collaboration – such as innovation, a strengthened position for fundraising, and mutual learning – and remain limited in their scale and thus the ability to be recognised nationally as reliable, trust-worthy, go-to sources of development.  

AKF began implementing the first phase of Juntos! in 2014, with the support of La Caixa Foundation. The initial purpose was to enable CSOs to access, create and deliver cost-effective and engaging training courses to help them address gaps in knowledge and build their skills. This is done primarily through a blended learning approach, which incorporates electronic and online media as well as traditional face-to-face teaching, as this helps to sustain this type of training far into the future. 

Beginning with eight local CSO partners, Juntos! has steadily grown in both size and scope to include 27 partners and a wider mandate to: 

• Increase the effectiveness and sustainability of Mozambican civil society when responding to challenges through collaboration amongst partners; 
• Increase public trust and confidence in Mozambican CSOs; 
• Become known at the national level as an innovative platform for learning; 
• Act as a knowledge sharing platform for Mozambican civil society and community members. 

Juntos! represents the development sector’s move towards locally-driven projects and solutions in action. Partners on the ground drive the vision, mission, and activities of the platform; decide what their training and skills-building priorities are; and write and film their own blended learning courses that are tailored to local contexts and cultures. 

Through its 27 partners, Juntos! reaches target groups across the country: those in remote areas, women and girls, small businesses and farmers, etc, and works across many sectors, such as access to information, health, child welfare, education,