Upenyu Mawande is the Director of Programs, Africa for the Judith Neilson Foundation. She is also a Board Member of Plan International Australia, and co-chair of the Australian International Development Network advisory committee.
There is a saying and childhood song at home in Zimbabwe where I’m from, “Kandiro kanobva kunobva kamwe”. Give and you will receive in return. Generosity was taught to me at a young age, from the actual songs we sung, through to my mother reaching into her wallet to give to me change for donation buckets, to the champions of our communities heralded – only those who gave in service of others.
My personal journey of giving started with high school volunteering at a disabled children’s home with Rotary and then giving and volunteering in my 20s with an after-care centre for girls rescued from trafficking in Cambodia, causes that resonated a saying a heard there “To succumb to the enormity of the problem is to fail the one”.
I believe I could engage with those and other calls to action because of what I had learnt younger. Generosity was observed, facilitated, cultural, linked to my faith, and almost built into and a part of my personal identity, so decisions to give/ volunteer later on in life were easy because of the people who emulated it for me from youth.
I think it's the challenge inherent in the lottery of birth. There are some injustices you see, especially working in development, that just don't make sense. I've had experiences where I've seen things and engaged with causes in different places where the difference between my own lived experience versus what people were grappling with, didn’t make sense. We can logicalise it and turn development speak - into health outcomes, educational outcomes or economic equity etc., but really, it's about fairness, justice and dignity for me. And that’s what drives my giving - the life I have lived is due to the “lottery of birth” and I'm trying to balance the books in whatever way I can.
Through time, talent, and treasure.
Giving my time is something that I really believe in and despite work and home commitments, I volunteer. I've volunteered for different organisations; from feeding the homeless, youth mentoring for at risk youth, ferrying people along journeys to Cambodia for fundraising and visibility trips, to I’ve done the small things like helping out post floods/ disasters.
From a talent perspective, it’s defined most of my career. I used to be an accountant in a former life, but I’ve had 16 years now of applying my mind to something I'm personally passionate about, international development. Through it, I get to engage in the business, strategic, donor engagement, and program quality assurance sides of development.
And in terms of giving my treasure, I try to find trusted organisations to fund, and as much as possible, I try not to be overly emotional in my giving (though I allow for that too in smaller quantities). I’ve really allowed myself to add more thought and structure behind my personal giving by observing who I’m giving to, understanding what they’re about and then working out how I contribute from there.
I fundamentally believe that there are great people doing great work, and great funders wanting to fund great work. Oftentimes we think about the end goal, which is always around what will change, but a large part of why I'm in this space is to give to the doers, to help the people who are doing the work. Ultimately my entire world is trying to be that bridge.
My biggest learning/ reflection is that both sides need support and equipping. We don’t get everything right all the time but my observation is 99% of the time any unmet goals/ challenges don’t come from malicious intent, but from a lack of visibility, knowledge, information, the right people in the room advising organisations on how to hear or see funders, and funders on how to understand contexts, development or make decisions on how, where and who to give to or work and partner with.
My future ambitions are that we become much more strategic and bolder in our giving and start thinking collaboratively. My own giving journey has evolved from a pure heart reaction into something more strategic.
At heart I am ambitious for impact, and not small, localised impact, but I think we need to give a decent shot at change en masse. To get there though we need to be braver, bolder, and more critically, more strategic and more collaborative. We have to stop thinking about it as charity and see the communities as people who we can collaborate with to create the development outcomes that they want and need. When we turn charity into philanthropy you end up engaging with your giving in a completely different way. There is so much opportunity for innovation, outsized impact and partnership in these spaces that we need to activate.
Even in my present roles when I begin to rehearse our own limitations, I remind myself and my colleagues that our funding is not just our funding and our hands are not just our hands. There are others out there who are also trying to collaborate and work themselves out of their jobs. To solve for some of the worlds most wicked problems, and to support communities in their own journeys of self-actualisation, we have to be willing to connect and find synergies across funders, governments, FP/ NFP organisations and individuals.
I heard a great quote at a conference last month that I think perfectly sums my ambition for giving in the sector "The narcissism of small differences often gets in the way of collaboration. We have to create a sense of abundance through partnership.”
In practical terms, we’re seeing the greatest transfer of wealth to women. If we don't make the effort and spend the time helping these women get excited about what they could do, we run the risk of it ending up in the charity space and not having the fullest effect. It's critical that we amplify women’s stories and activate them through inspiration. People need to be inspired rather than guilted into philanthropy, because there's more wind in inspiration. There's so much more air in being creative and thinking beyond yourself. I think storytelling energises, and it sparks that creativity.
Funding has traditionally been in these male dominated spaces, and if the information that has been reserved there isn’t transferred to the people who are now the actual decision makers and the real power brokers, we won’t reach our full potential. We need to equip women so they can get excited about giving and make really strategic decisions.
Born and raised in Zimbabwe, Upenyu Mawande is an international development executive, passionate about people, partnerships and improving the lives of the world’s poor and vulnerable and addressing systemic inequity. Utilising her combination of program, strategic, financial management, fundraising and philanthropy skills, Upenyu has nearly 20 years’ experience in strategic leadership and program management in the international aid and development and not-for-profit sector.
Upenyu has leveraged her cross-cultural experience and been responsible for leading teams and working/ consulting with over 300 partner organisations in over 45 African, Asian, Pacific and Latin American countries and sat on various advisory committees of the international development peak bodies of Australia and New Zealand. With partnerships, collaboration and realising synergistic impact across the sector at her core, she has also led the establishment of teams focussed on bridging the divide between funders and implementors, supporting design, acquisition, and end-to-end donor engagement and accountability (particularly to corporate and Ultra-High Net Worth Individual philanthropy), as well as leading partnership and consortium development and management.
Previously in development programming, Upenyu has transitioned to philanthropy, currently overseeing grant-making, partnerships and programs as the Director of Programs - Africa portfolio at the Judith Neilson Foundation – one of Australia’s largest funders to social justice, sustainable development and equity internationally. She is also an advisory committee member for the Australian International Development Network and a non-executive Board Member of Plan International Australia.
