Catalytic Impact - Friendship Bench and ACADES

Note: This post was published before our 2025 rebrand. We are now called the African Collaborative.

As an impact catalyst, we measure our success according to the impact and achievements of the African- led organizations we support because they are the true heroes of systemic change on the continent. For this edition of our Insider Report, our Strategic Partnerships Manager, Shamira Lukomwa, sat down with two of our Visionary Partners, Dr. Dixon Chibanda, Founder & CEO at Friendship Bench, and Hastings Nhlane, Co-Founder & CEO of ACADES to chat about their impact in 2022, what they’re excited about in 2023 and beyond and what unrestricted, multiyear unrestricted funding has unlocked for their organizations. 

Friendship Bench

Zimbabwe | Cohort #2, Interviewed by Shamira Lukomwa 

Friendship Bench trained grandmother with member of the community

Anchored in over a decade of research, the Friendship Bench has reimagined the delivery of evidence-based mental healthcare by training community health workers to provide accessible talk therapy. Since 2019, Friendship Bench has trained over 1,700 community health workers and served over 178,000 clients across 14 districts in Zimbabwe with psychological interventions that are rooted in Zimbabwean culture. Friendship Bench is active in 6 countries and over the next four years plans to reach 2 million people, train 5,000 community health workers, and expand into 10 countries - taking their model global in a big way. 

• Friendship Bench has some serious scaling goals over the next few years. What’s one goal you’re really excited about? 

  Dr. Dixon Chibanda: In 2023 we are launching “Friendship Bench in a Box,” a do-it-yourself offering that will allow organizations around the world to start a Friendship Bench program wherever they are. Interested organizations will go through a 5-step process which includes establishing suitability, developing a theory of change, training community health workers, and developing a monitoring & evaluation plan - resulting in a truly unique delivery model tailored to each community. 

  We’re currently in the process of building the back-end resource portal that will provide implementing partners access to technical support from the Friendship Bench team.

• As you know, AVFund is a strong proponent of multiyear, unrestricted funding and advocates that the sector as a whole continues to move in that direction. What role has unrestricted and multiyear funding played in realizing Friendship Bench’s goals?

  Dixon: Unrestricted, multiyear funding has given us the space to really ask what it would take to scale efficiently, effectively, and sustainably. From there, we were able to develop a robust scaling strategy which includes building our team, especially at the senior management level.

  Unrestricted funding from the African Visionary Fund and other like-minded funders is supporting the hire of our first Development Director which is truly a game changer for us. We’ve always wanted and needed a Development Director and now we’re in the position to make that a reality.

• In addition to the core grant, Visionary Partners have access to an additional $15,000 each year in additional funding for special projects focused on their core organizational development goals. Can you share how Friendship Bench used this funding?

  Dixon: We used the $15,000 portfolio support grant to hire two consultants - one to assess and identify gaps within our team structure and the other to support our team’s communication and presentation skills. As we scale and interact with a more global audience, we want to hone our presentation skills further and learn best practices for connecting with wider, more global audiences. 

“Being an African visionary means thinking outside of the box and really coming up with solutions that are rooted in local contexts and cultures. I strongly believe that it’s important for African visionaries to leverage existing resources on the continent and bring out the best that we have in our community.” - Dr. Dixon Chibanda, Founder & CEO, Friendship Bench 

In the News 

Did you know there were friendship benches at the FIFA World Cup?

Friendship Bench, in partnership with FIFA and the Sport for Health partnership, led by the World Health Organization and Qatar’s Ministry of Public Health built 32 friendship benches to highlight the importance of mental health and the role that sports play to promote physical and mental wellbeing. The 32 benches - one for each competing nation- were designed by local Qatari artists and permanently installed in public locations across Doha.

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ACADES

Malawi | Cohort #2, Interviewed by Shamira Lukomwa

ACADES agriculture production

ACADES is a youth-led organization tackling the core challenges smallholder youth farmers face and utilizing the power of the collective to improve access to financing and markets. Their sustainable solutions, including tailor-made input loans, ethical agriculture markets, and technical and entrepreneurial training have provided an on-ramp to farmers looking to increase their productivity and incomes. Since 2015, ACADES has invested in more than 10,000 smallholder farmers in Malawi to improve their livelihoods and make agriculture a sustainable and profitable career for youth. 

• Congratulations on the recent completion of your storage facility and office space in Lilongwe! I read that the facility will significantly reduce ACADES’ commodity storage and administration costs. What else is on the horizon for the team?

  Hastings Nhlane: Thank you. We have grown very fast over the past three years and we project the same level of growth moving forward. A key question for us is how we can proactively strengthen our delivery model and operational systems in preparation for this projected level of growth. We are investing in research, strengthening our monitoring and evaluation systems, and optimizing our delivery model, services, and products.  

  One way we’re hoping to expand is by sharing our model with other local organizations and providing them with the training and tools to implement our model in areas beyond the reach of our current operations. 

• I’m so glad to hear that. I know that making those types of investments often requires flexible long-term funding. Can you share how the type of funding you receive impacts your organization?

  Innovation is at the center of our work and having unrestricted funding allows us to be innovative and adaptive, which is critical to our ability to provide relevant solutions that address the real challenges our communities face. 

  When we receive restricted funding, it’s often tied to a funder’s particular interest, not necessarily our strategic priorities. This makes it challenging for us to make the necessary infrastructural investments in our growth, quality, and depth of the interventions we provide. Unrestricted funding helps us invest in areas that are typically challenging to fundraise for, but are critical for our growth and resilience for years to come. For example, we used our core grant from AVFund to digitize our operations and improve our data management systems so that we can more effectively serve our growing team and client base now and in the future.

  Unrestricted, multiyear funding allows us to thoughtfully prepare for growth as opposed to simply responding to it when it is already happening.

• Those challenges you described are exactly why we’re intentional about giving unrestricted and multiyear grants. As a funding partner, we’re also interested in how we can add value to our partners beyond our grantmaking. Is there any additional value we’ve been able to add beyond our core grant?

  Our partnership has extended beyond the core grant. AVFund team members have introduced us to new funders and some of those introductions have led to conversations about funding opportunities that are very promising. We’ve also been invited to apply for grants by foundations that hear about us from AVFund!

“Being an African visionary means we are at the center of local problems. We deeply understand the challenges our communities face because we experience them ourselves. We work in partnership with our community to innovate and find long lasting solutions to the challenges we see each and every day.” - Hastings Nhlane, Co-founder & CEO, ACADES