by Falastin Omar, Change Fund Manager at NEAR
Walking a tightrope in the middle of a storm is no metaphor for many local organisations across the Global South, it’s a daily reality. Winds of conflict, climate shocks, and abrupt donor withdrawals batter their balance. The rope sways, frays, and tightens under pressure. And yet, local actors keep walking. They are the ones responding first, holding others up, and stitching together support where none exists. Too often, they do so without timely funding or sustained backing because the system has yet to recognise the depth of what they already offer.
At NEAR, we believed it was time to stop talking about safety nets and start weaving one. Not a net cast from above, but one woven and stitched by the very communities walking that line, reinforced by their knowledge, resilience, and leadership. Designed to hold, flex, and restore not just in crisis, but through it.
That’s where the Change Fund comes in. It is part of a shared safety net, a strong fabric woven by many contributors ready to catch communities and helping to alleviate and prevent a free fall, while giving them room to recover. Whether bridging gaps when donor funding disappears, supporting displaced populations over time, or reinforcing local systems that prevent future shocks, the Fund enables communities to lead on their own terms. Each strand of this woven fabric – the local organisations and the community members themselves – also stay visible and influential in the when, where and how the net is deployed.
What is the Change Fund
Powered and incubated within NEAR, the Change Fund is a flexible, demand-driven and locally-led and governed pooled funding mechanism The primary focus of the Change Fund is to provide trust-based grants to vetted and pre-approved NEAR members when crises are declared. It’s designed to act like a safety net—flexible, ready, and close to the ground—for local organisations in the Global South facing urgent challenges. Our goal is simple but powerful: facilitate support needed by local leaders —quickly, directly, and with dignity.
Traditionally, aid funding is often slow, centralised, and top-down driven. It’s like asking someone in the middle of a tightrope to wait while the safety net is being made below them.
The Change Fund is intentionally designed to be: rapid, decentralised, and locally driven – with governance and decision-making held by local leaders.
The Flexibility of the Safety Net: Support through Three Windows
The Change Fund provides support for local organisations through three funding windows with additional modalities envisioned in the future:
Emergency Response Window: rapid support when a crisis is declared through criteria defined by a locally-led governance team. A quick and nimble safety net to address sudden shocks, conflict flare ups, and climate-related disasters.
Displacement Window: supports local and refugee-led organisations responding to the complex and protracted realities of forced displacement, both for people uprooted from their homes and for the host communities that receive them. It aims to move communities from survival to stability and, eventually, to self-determined resilience.
Bridge Funding Window: has been activated once to support critical life-saving programmes running when the US Government froze foreign funding in 2025. It is designed to preserve continuity preventing essential services, staff and community from collapsing due to funding disruptions beyond local leaders’ control. This represents a quick stitch repair kit that mends the tear before the whole net unravels.
The Golden Threads that Make the Change Fund Unique
The Change Fund is a deliberate departure from conventional aid structures built on the understanding that communities closest to the crises must be at the centre of the response, not at the margins of decision-making.
At its foundation, the Fund is demand-driven and peer-led. Local organisations don’t just receive funding, they shape where it goes, how it is allocated, and why. Decisions are made by an Oversight Body composed of NEAR members themselves, expert leaders rooted in proximity, not abstraction.
The Change Fund does not wait for formal appeals or outside validation to act. It listens when local leaders raise the alarm and responds when others pause. Whether through emergency grants, displacement support, or bridge funding, it adapts to local priorities not donor cycles.
Its value lies in what it makes possible: faster responses, stronger local leadership, and more relevant, community-rooted solutions.
In a system still defined by top-down control and procedural rigidity, the Change Fund offers a working model of what it looks when funding follows trust.
Designing the Net: My Role within the Change Fund
At NEAR, our role isn’t to dictate where resources should go, it is to hold space for local leadership to make decisions. As the Change Fund Manager, my role within the NEAR Secretariat, is to hold that frame and to ensure the structures underpinning the Fund are strong and yet agile enough to enhance locally-led action without constraining it.
My role is to ensure processes function with integrity and align with the Fund’s principles, that decision-making remains transparent and equitable and that governance structure of the Change Fund is supported throughout the grant making process. So that means upholding the systems grounded in peer accountability, contextual knowledge and collective decision-making; and promoting genuine community-led, and high impact responses. Because when the right support structures are in place, communities do not need direction – they need room to lead.
In Kenya, when severe flooding struck Marsabit County in 2024, it was the Pastoralist Community Initiative and Development Assistance (PACIDA), a local organisation and member of NEAR, that was ready and equipped to responded swiftly. With support from the Change Fund, PACIDA delivered unconditional cash transfers to vulnerable households, provided clean water and hygiene support, and helped stabilise communities facing the loss of livelihoods and basic necessities.
The most rewarding aspect of my work is continually witnessing how quickly local organisations mobilise when provided with trust-based funding. It's incredibly inspiring to see how rapidly these funds translate into meaningful action, how they directly impact people's lives.
Rethreading the System: Global Impact of the Change Fund
For too long, local communities have been written into the margins of funding systems designed elsewhere. Changing how aid is delivered means shifting who decides, who defines the crisis, and who sets the agenda. Devolving decision-making power directly to local actors is key to changing the way aid is designed, funded and delivered. Local actors are the innovators who know their communities and can find the solutions to challenges they intimately understand.
The Change Fund consistently produces evidence of what is possible when power shifts. Innovation and impactful solutions emerge more effectively when local leaders have autonomy and trust.
More than funding, the Change fund offers a provocation: What would the sector look like and what impact could be achieved across communities if more funds were designed and managed in this locally-led way? If governance were local, if risks were shared, if accountability were redefined through relationships rather than compliance forms? We do not hold all the answers, but we do hold the space for local leaders to lead; for bureaucratic models to be reimagined; and for funding structures to become tools of solidarity.
The Change Fund is one strand in a larger weave of transformation. And if more of us are committed to loosen the grip, to listen more deeply, and invest in trusting relationships, then the net we build together won’t just catch people in crisis, it will hold them up while they design support structures with their communities.
———
Falastin Omar is the Change Fund Manager at NEAR. She brings extensive experience in urban governance, youth development, community resilience, and social impact. Her work focuses on strengthening locally led systems, advancing inclusive social infrastructure, supporting social entrepreneurship, and expanding equitable access to resources for marginalized and underserved communities.