Through 17 member organisations and their partners, Digni is committed to working together with and empowering individuals and communities that live in poverty or are in various ways left behind. We seek to enhance human rights, empower people locally and reduce poverty in all its forms.
Digni works in strategic partnership with member organisations and local partners with close relationships to their communities. These actors are strategically placed to work for change because they are trusted, possess local knowledge and often maintain a long-term presence.
The figure above explains the relationships linking the chain of actors involved. The central actors (the secretariat, member organisations and their partners) are marked in pink. Together, these actors constitute the Digni fellowship. Read more about the role of each actor below.
Norad
The Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad) is a body under the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Its` main purpose is to manage governmental aid funds, extracted from taxes paid by Norwegian citizens. Norad grants funding to Norwegian civil society actors, among others, and ensures that these funds are spent in the best possible way.
Digni
Digni engages in agreements with Norad and distribute these funds to our member organisations; the current agreement period commenced in May 2023.
Important tasks of the secretariat are:
- Being the link to Norad. The secretariat applies for funding, manages the agreement on behalf of the member organisations and reports aggregated results back to Norad.
- Quality assurance. The secretariat ensures that the project support granted to members and their local partners meets Norad’s criteria for providing support to civil society.
- The secretariat facilitates networking and synergies between members, partners and other relevant development aid actors.
- Dialogue and advocacy. The secretariate profiles diakonal work in Norwegian public debate and highlights important aspects of the discourse of religion and development.
- Capacity development of members and partner organisations. A central task of the Digni secretariat is capacity development building of members and their partners in various areas.We have therefore created a Learning Hub on the learning platform Fabo. This hub is the entrance to a “learning universe” where you can find learning sites and resources that can be useful for Digni member organisations and their partners. You only have to create a free account on Fabo to access the resources.On Fabo you can find an onboarding course that helps you to understand Digni better. The first module provides an introduction to the structures and roles in the Digni fellowship and the values and strategic priorities of Digni. The second module presents ethical aspects that are important to reflect upon as development actors. The third module provides a basic introduction to central concepts within anti-corruption, Digni’s view on financial integrity and what compliance in Digni means in practice through concrete cases and examples.
Member organisations
Digni’s 17 members are independent Norwegian Christian faith-based organisations, churches and mission agencies engaged in long-term development cooperation and partnerships around the world. The members own Digni in the sense that they constitute its General Assembly. All members receive project funding from Norad through the Digni secretariat.
Partner organisations
Development funds are channelled from the members to their partners, which include local NGOs, national churches and other actors that run and implement the development projects. Approximately 70 partners of Digni members work in some 30 countries, mainly in Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Many of the partners are faith-based organisations, but this is not a requirement.