Welcome to SIVIO Institute, where we are pursuing a certain kind of socio-economic and political transformation that is people centred and people driven. We like to think of ourselves as a think and do organization. We established SIVIO Institute as part of ongoing efforts to be an active catalyst for transformation and also after a realization of the frustration with the weak and inadequate attempts at inclusive economic development and democratisation.

There is an urgency to our work, we seek to contribute towards building resilient communities that recognize and leverage their assets but are also ably supported by an effective government with responsive policies. We strongly believe in helping strengthen communities and citizens’ own agency as we subscribe to the thinking democracy can only thrive where there are active citizens.

In all this we remain absolutely non-partisan but we welcome political parties to be part of our processes and where possible to use some of the knowledge products and innovations that we will be developing. We realize that the task of nation-building cannot be done by one organization alone and as such we see ourselves as part of an ecosystem of collaborative network. We are positioning ourselves as a learning and continuously evolving organisation.

Our initial work and focus has been organized around three inter-related areas:

• Policy Analysis and Advocacy
• Communities
• Philanthropy

Although fairly new in the space, our thinking on what needs to be done has been developing over years. In 2015 we published ‘Beyond the Crises: Zimbabwe’s Prospects for Transformation’ and we have been debating around the ideas contained in the book at www.beyondthecrises.org

On the 5^th of March we launched www.zimcitizenswatch.org, a platform that tracks conversion of promises or pledges made by the President into policy. The platform is part of an attempt to steer the public debates from being highly polarized towards a more issues-based process. We are committed to ensuring that our contributions for policy considerations will be informed by evidence that has been subjected to rigorous analysis We are also particularly keen to be at the cutting edge of innovations in the manner in which we play a catalytic role in building philanthropy and citizen led democratic dispensation.

Thanks again for visiting the site. Please feel free to reach out directly to me tendaim@sivioinstitute.org if you have any ideas on how we can enrich our work or know of others we can work with.

Sincerely

Tendai Murisa