Alfanar is a non-governmental, non-profit venture philanthropy fund which supports grassroots organisations in the Arab world that promote social change. We provide grants to NGOs whose creative ideas address entrenched problems; which often result from the inequalities in our society.

Alfanar was previously called Arab Learning Initiative. We have for a while felt that the name Arab Learning Initiative was causing confusion as people associated our work with education. We have therefore decided to change our name to Alfanar. Alfanar comes from the Greek word Fanari which means street light or beacon and in Arabic Alfanar means lighthouse. We like the association with those meanings and feel it is a more appropriate description of what we are doing.

We support projects in a variety of sectors including but not limited to education, health, strengthening of civil society, empowerment of women, human rights and the environment. Our projects will deliver services, provide training or advocate change.  In all cases, we emphasise financial sustainability in our projects to decrease NGO dependence on external funding. 

We currently have an office in Egypt and plan to gradually expand our presence into most Arab countries. We will develop long term relationships both with the organizations we support and with our donors. We believe that achieving social change is a long term goal and requires a long term commitment.

Alfanar is not affiliated to any government or to any commercial enterprise.

What's New

• We have appointed our first Chief Executive, Siham Bortcosh.
• Alfanar has just entered into a partnership with the Egyptian Association for Social and Economic Rights, an exciting NGO supporting the livelihoods and economic and social rights of potters in the Fustat district of Cairo. This is just the sort of community based organisation taking an integrated approach to the needs of its community that Alfanar will support. Read more...
• We have renewed our commitment to our partner Information and Technology Support, to enable them to expand the scope of their research and information services by adding the publications of NGOs and government organisations to their existing digitised archive. Read more...
• We have taken a calculated risk with trusted partner Bashayer Women’s Project, expanding our support to include a pilot of a health clinic and outreach service in the Arab Ghoneim district of Cairo. Read more...
• We have just completed an independent mid-term evaluation (PDF) of the Training and Credit Programme being implemented by our partner Wadi El Nil Association. This evaluation, although early in the lifetime of this programme, shows much promise in terms of impact.
  
  

"By choosing to work in complex sectors with grassroots organisations and by providing both financial support and linkages between NGOs and the various skills and services it has access to, Alfanar is pursuing a creative and dynamic approach to social change. This sort of  philanthropy is rare in the Arab region and should be supported."

-- Nabil Qaddumi,
Board Member,
The Welfare Association

"Alfanar takes a distinctive approach to identifying and working with its partners, prioritizing the need for long term sustainability. This explicitly addresses one of the institutional weaknesses of civil society organizations in the Arab world and elsewhere, that of long term dependency on the international funding community which has tended to create a tier of organizations which are fundamentally unsustainable without expatriate funding.”

-- David French,
CEO,
Westminster Foundation for Democracy