In Cabo Delgado, AKF currently supports 123 village development organisations (VDOs) on campaigns and …

AKDN / Lucas Cuervo Moura

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Mozambique | Civil Society

A critical issue facing civil society today is the need for improved organisational sustainability. Civil society organisations (CSOs) struggle to achieve institutional, financial and programmatic sustainability – challenges compounded by limited access to relevant and locally adapted capacity building training.


The Juntos! initiative helps civil society organisations to overcome these challenges and address their critical long-term needs: governance, leadership, strategic planning, networking, communications, human resources and resource mobilisation.


5 million

Over five million Mozambicans have benefited indirectly through the Juntos! civil society organisations

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Aga Khan Foundation

Juntos! gives civil society actors access to relevant, engaging and highly applicable training courses. It enables them to create and deliver their own courses, transmitting their skills and knowledge to others.


Initiated and sponsored by the Aga Khan Foundation (AKF) and La Caixa Foundation in 2014, Juntos! – “together” in Portuguese – is a key forum for civil society in Mozambique today. Its 27 partners bring together a wide range of activities in health, education, women’s rights, children’s rights and advocacy. It has directly benefited approximately 264,450 people in areas such as training, event participation and humanitarian aid.


The forum’s premise is that partnership amongst a highly diverse group of organisations can bring about synergies that have the potential to make civil society in Mozambique more impactful and more sustainable over the long term. This will enable civil society to achieve its full potential to improve quality of life.


The network’s participatory governance model ensures that all partners have an equal say in operational decisions and that external input from key actors in Mozambique is also taken into account. Juntos! Management Meetings, in which all partners are represented, take place every two months, while the network’s Advisory Board, which includes external organisations such as USAID and Microsoft, meets once a year.


Through its current network of partners, Juntos! hopes to reach out to hundreds more CSOs in the coming years. It aims to build the capacity of its members and to empower key intermediary partners to strengthen smaller organisations in the country.


The Juntos! video lab for creating blended learning courses in Maputo, Mozambique. 

AKDN / Munir Ahmad

Blended Learning

The Juntos! approach to capacity building rests on blended learning, which combines short video-based courses ideal for self-study with highly interactive, practically-oriented workshops. Incorporating user-centred design and delivery, technological innovation, new pedagogical methodologies and practical hands-on learning, this approach enables CSOs to learn, connect and collaborate. The initiative also builds the skills of key organisations to create their own blended learning content. This increases local ownership and empowers local organisations by giving them the tools to share their knowledge with others.


Juntos! is part of AKF’s larger Blended Learning Initiative, aimed at raising the capacity of CSOs in the countries where it works. The initiative is designed to help civil society actors to overcome barriers to effective learning and to enable them to access highly localised, practically-oriented, high-quality, low-cost blended learning courses. Courses include organisational strengthening topics such as organisational capacity assessment, storytelling, monitoring and evaluation, communication and collaboration, and resource mobilisation; and relevant programmatic topics such as rural development, sanitation, health, nutrition, water management, vocational training and entrepreneurship.


Courses and other resources are available for free in over 20 languages on the AKF Learning Hub.


Community-led Development


We are committed to putting local communities at the centre of our work, using an inclusive and participatory governance model. This helps to make our interventions directly relevant to local people over the long term. AKF has developed 219 village development organisations (VDOs) across Cabo Delgado and Nampula provinces. AKF supports 58 VDOs in activities that serve more than 110,000 people.


VDOs supported by AKF are:



  • encouraging the engagement of parents in children’s education;

  • mobilising and coordinating community repair of tertiary roads, enabling access to main roads or production fields;

  • promoting opportunities for women to work as community health volunteers; and

  • supporting youth participation in community decision-making.