I4C's Global Structure

Mission: To protect, strengthen, & expand civic space across Africa.

The I4C Africa Hub is a pan-African organization that fosters home-grown African solutions to civic space challenges by:

• Helping unite civil society, human rights defenders and activists to create a common voice across the continent, bringing all of Africa together to fight for an open operating environment;
• Being a multi-stakeholder platform for innovation, that emphasizes new ideas, practices, creativity, insight, empowerment and services; and
• Establishing a community of practice that brings together all actors for experience and knowledge sharing.

The Hub has three main focus areas:

• WE-Account: accelerating solutions and ideas that enhance transparency, accountability including around natural resource management.
• WE-Engage: a hybrid on and offline approach to strengthen capacity, build solutions, and increase connections among CSOs in Africa; and 
• WE-Protect: a rapid response mechanism to address activists’ legal & security needs. 

The Hub is registered as an independent entity in both Uganda and Kenya and has 5 Regional Connectors (RCs) located in each of the continent’s sub-regions that assist with the implementation of the Hub’s activities while National Chapters located in Nigeria, Tunisia, Zambia, Morocco, Kenya, Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic & Cameroon promote the Hub’s goals and activities at the country & national level.

Mission: To create and widen civic spaces by fostering constructive CSO-government relations, strengthening the expertise of civil society organizations, and improving knowledge management within and between civil society organizations.

The Central Asia Hub is working to implement innovative ways to combat restrictions faced by civil society groups operating in the region by:

• bolstering an enabling and inclusive environment for human rights and freedoms;
• supporting a new generation of civic space activists; and
• enabling civil society to proactively act and respond to global and interregional challenges to civic space through improved monitoring, transparency and accountability.

I4C in Central Asia became a common resource for Civil Society in the 7 Central Asian countries of Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. I4C in Central Asia supports the development of Civil Society in the region, by helping Civil Society Organizations in their region to develop and utilize innovative approaches that address the development challenges, shrinking civic space challenges they are facing in their regions.

Mission: Create, develop, and expand opportunities, capacities, and spaces towards the transformation of effective and impactful civil societies in the region, towards improving the lives of citizens and communities, & strengthening citizens’ engagement and accountable governance. 

The East Asia Hub objectives are: 

• ProvidesCivil Society with the knowledge and tools to effectively defend democracy, rights, & freedoms
• Supports Democratic Movement Building in their struggles, facilitating solidarity across movements.
• ProvidesSpaces for civil society to learn from each other and co- design & innovate ideas and projects.
• Amplifies Voices of the silenced, marginalized, & minoritized.

The Hub works under the principles of co-creation & innovation to guide us in defending, expanding, & creating civic spaces in East Asia, in 11 Southeast Asian countries, plus Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, South Korea, & Japan. It has partnerships with Asia-Pacific, Asian, EAsian, and SEAsian regional CSO networks, national and local community organizations, rights defenders, trade unions, media, tech and digital rights activists, artists, cultural workers, academics, researchers, and parliamentarians.

The East Asia Hub is hosted by the Asian Forum for Human Rights & Development (FORUM-ASIA) in Thailand, and the Asia Democracy Network (ADN) in South Korea and is in the process of registering as an independent legal entity in South Korea.

Mission: To provide space and support for civil society leaders, technologists, social entrepreneurs, and academics to co-create solutions to the region’s most complex social, political, and economic problems. 

The I4C LAC Hubs objectives are:

• To create an ecosystem recognised by civil society leaders, technologists, academia, the private sector, and others
• To serve as a stage to come together to solve some of the region’s most complex social, political, and economic problems
• To serve as the “go-to” place for social activism in Latin America and the Caribbean

The LAC Hub works in 28 countries across Latin America & the Caribbean. There are four partner organizations that host the Hub: RACI (Argentina), Faro (Ecuador), Alianza ONG (Dominican Republic) and Jóvenes Contra la Violencia (Guatemala). There are 20 permanent members (including CSOs, CSO networks, social enterprises) from 16 countries, representing nearly 400 LAC CSOs and 540 CSOs reached through its members.

Mission: Our mission is to build a dynamic member-led innovation Hub working on achieving an inclusive and safe civic space through innovative collaboration and co-creation methodologies.  

Strategic focus areas:

Act as an advocate for the MENA region’s civic space issues and develop innovative resources and tools for effective campaigning and advocacy.

• Focusing on developing innovative digital advocacy and policy influence tools, narrative-based campaigns, influencing social and civic space policy. 

• Providing adapted and locally-sensitive knowledge resources to civil society

• Strengthening digital security: Enhance the digital security capacities of journalists, CSOs, and activists through targeted capacity building and campaigns.

Cultivate a multi-sector civic collaboration model in areas related to social innovation, civic technology, social accountability, financial sustainability and accountability.

• Fostering collaboration across sectors by integrating social innovation and civic technology. 

• Developing and launching civic technology solutions for civil society 

• Enhancing the financial sustainability and accountability of civil society organizations.

Support coordination and exchange among civil society actors by curating technical and financial resources and convening thematic Communities of Practice.

The Hub has multiple civil society partners and subgrantees across the region supporting additional grassroots initiatives across MENA. Membership includes 2,000 CSOs, CBOs, HRDs, journalists, WHRDs, & youth networks from 16 MENA countries.

Mission: To create a culture of experimentation in civil society to design, test and prototype new ideas to address the sector’s most pressing challenges and innovate opportunities to sustain the CSO movement.

The Hub is a youth-led network and focuses on the following objectives:

• To mobilize, coordinate and facilitate resource mobilization and next generation youth leaders to sustain the CSO movement;
• To identify gaps within the Pacific civil society space and build the innovative capacity on approaches to activism; 
• To create a collaborative ecosystem between diverse actors such as civil society, technologists, private sector and social entrepreneurs; and  
• To build the capacity of civil society in capturing citizen-generated data to increase the sector’s accountability and legitimacy as an intermediary between citizens and governments.

Mission: provide a safe space for strengthening civil society, creating an enabling environment, contributing to sustainable development with equitable participation towards a just and peaceful society in South Asia.

The South Asia Hub pools a reservoir of diverse skills and knowledge that enable members to create linkages, exchange services and tap into the expertise of the South Asia region to focus on the following approaches: 

• connecting beyond CSOs by mobilizing and engaging with journalists and artivism networks; 
• improving the financial sustainability of CSOs by introducing innovative funding models;
• strengthening regional advocacy and campaigning efforts;
• creating digital  and physical safe spaces for human rights defenders; and
• designing civic technologies to promote and protect civic space in the region.

The Hub has  incubator partners including Bytes for All (Pakistan), the Collective Campaign for Peace (Nepal) to implement activities on its behalf. Its membership includes 42 global and regional CSOs & 1,566 network members including HRDs, artists, activists, youth and marginalized communities across Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Nepal, Maldives, Sri Lanka, & Bhutan.