Robin Hood Model
Robin Hood Model
What Sets us apart
Proven and Impactful Content
We work with practical, well-tested tools and approaches, shaped by over ten years of experience in civil society. Our content is continuously refined through practice and feedback.
Care for People and Purpose
We care about the people we work with and the purpose they serve. Through reflection, trust, and personal support, we create learning spaces that enable real change.
Outstanding Facilitation
Our work is guided by skilled, well-prepared facilitation that is engaging, structured, and goal-oriented. We design and lead processes that help people move from learning to action.
KEY CONCEPTS
Our work is grounded in a set of practical concepts and tools that are part of our Civil Society Academy toolbox.
These concepts have been developed, tested and iterated over more than a decade through our training, advisory and facilitation work across diverse contexts.
Principles for Advocacy Coalitions and Multi-Actor Partnerships
Our work with coalitions and multi-actor partnerships is based on clear principles around collective purpose, inclusivity, power awareness and adaptive management, which underpin our trainings, mentoring and learning paths
.jpg)
The Advocacy Canvas
Our work is grounded in a set of practical concepts and tools that are part of our Civil Society Academy toolbox.
These concepts have been developed, tested and iterated over more than a decade through our training, advisory and facilitation work across diverse contexts.
Change Processes for Building Coalition and Multi-Actor Partnerships
We apply a structured change process for coalition building, guiding coalitions from urgency and vision through experimentation, learning and adaptation towards sustained policy and systems change.
Land For Life Toolbox
The Land for Life Toolbox is a practical toolbox for multi-actor partnerships, capturing approaches and learnings from multi-actor collaboration for people-centred land governance, and translating them into concrete guidance, tools and case examples.
Download here
Social Accountability – The Governance Triangle
Our social accountability work is guided by the governance triangle, strengthening accountability between citizens, civil society and public institutions through practical mechanisms such as community scorecards and grievance systems.
tRACK rECORD
Scale and long-term experience
-
Over a decade of experience in advocacy, partnerships and social accountability: For more than 10 years, Civil Society Academy has delivered more than 100 open and tailor-made trainings and workshops, reaching thousands of participants across diverse regions and political contexts.
-
Trusted capacity-building provider: Our long-standing work in advocacy, coalition building and accountability has positioned us as a trusted training and advisory partner for civil society organisations and international programmes.
Multi-actor partnerships
-
Trusted provider for BMZ-supported multi-actor partnerships: Since 2025, Civil Society Academy has been commissioned by BENGO to support BMZ-funded multi-actor partnership projects.
-
Trainings, learning paths and mentoring: We deliver around six multi-actor partnership trainings per year in English and Spanish and accompany partnerships in Uganda, India, Brazil and Bolivia with tailored learning paths and mentoring.
-
Land for Life partnerships on land rights: We have supported land rights-focused multi-actor partnerships in Sierra Leone, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia and Liberia, contributing to concrete land policy influence processes.
-
Institutionalisation and sustainability: In several Land for Life contexts, our support contributed to the creation of new organisations that now host and sustain the partnerships.
-
Land for Life Multi-Actor Partnership Toolbox: Finalised in 2025, this toolbox supports learning and capacity building for multi-actor partnerships.
Advocacy coalitions and social accountability
-
Advocacy strategy development: We have supported more than 20 advocacy strategy processes for international and national organisations and coalitions, including Welthungerhilfe, GIZ, WWF, ActionAid and Sightsavers, as well as national initiatives such as My Food is Zimbabwean.
-
Right to Food in Africa initiative: For the past five years, we have accompanied Welthungerhilfe’s Right to Food in Africa initiative, supporting four advocacy coalitions with systematic advocacy strategy development and coalition building.
-
Food systems advocacy: We currently implement a multi-country advocacy training programme on food systems with GIZ in five countries, working with national and transnational advocacy coalitions.
-
Social accountability mechanisms: Our work includes hands-on experience with community scorecards, grievance redress mechanisms and citizen feedback systems, including in fragile contexts such as Afghanistan.
Other cross-cutting expertise
-
Human rights-based approaches: Since 2019, we have delivered trainings and advisory support on human rights-based approaches for civil society organisations.
-
Planning, monitoring and adaptive management: We support advocacy, accountability and partnership initiatives through theories of change, adaptive management, outcome harvesting and outcome mapping, strengthening learning and impact.
Partners
Facilitators
_edited.jpg)
Joachim Schwarz
Topics: Leadership, Social Innovation, Advocacy,
Multi-Actor Partnerships, Coaching
Joachim is passionate about social justice and is on a mission to support like-minded civil society actors and social entrepreneurs to become more powerful and innovative. Hence, in 2014 he left his NGO career to build the Civil Society Academy. He is an outstanding facilitator and coach with expertise in social innovation, leadership, organisational change, and advocacy. After more than 20 years in Africa and Asia, he is now based in Berlin.
Jonathan Tusubira
Topics: Advocacy, Human Rights-based Approach,
Journalism
Jonathan is an award-winning Innovator, Civic Journalist, Trainer and consultant in the areas of Human Rights, Media Development, Media Literacy and Good Governance in Africa. Over the last 15 years of his career, he has consulted for the Ford Foundation/Uganda Land Alliance, Disability Rights Fund, DW (Deutsche Welle) Akademie, and Boehm Gladen Foundation, among others. One of Jonathan’s social innovations aims at creating more spaces for diverse voices in the media and gives leaders an opportunity to listen to their citizens, and generally make better decisions. He believes that a community without a voice breeds disorder, suspicion, and a lack of public trust.
Leonore Gruenberg
Topics: Land Governance, Advocacy, Human rights based Approach
Leonore has been engaged in international development for over 14 years. From microfinance to the energy transition, land governance and human rights-based advocacy, her professional range spans widely but always turns around one central feature: capacity development. Whether in Mozambique, Madagascar, India or Ethiopia – Leonore is everywhere at home and comfortable in more than 5 languages. An excellent, highly-engaging facilitator, she joined CSA in early 2022 and is currently leading strategic planning workshops in both anglophone and francophone countries, developing training materials and coaching fresh facilitation potentials. Leonore holds a MA in International Economics and has previously worked for GIZ, GOPA and PlanetFinance.
.jpg)
Retta Menberu
Topics: Leadership, Advocacy, Human Rights Based Approach
Retta Menberu Woldetsadik (M.D., MSc) stands up for civil society-state dynamics, good governance, advocacy, and a rights-based approach to development. Since 2018 he has been part of CSA, built up, and leads the Africa office to advocate for change and empower the youth. After working more than two decades in development and health leadership, as a trainer, researcher, and consultant in clinical medicine and public health, Retta developed himself to a broader development leadership and facilitation role by operating as Country Director for ActionAid International, and as regional Strategy Adviser for Rush Foundation. Additionally to his work with CSA, he works as a coordinator, researcher, adviser, and facilitator of international development and humanitarian organizations, alliances, and multi-actor partnerships in diverse contexts across Africa, Asia, and Europe.
Sohini paul
Topics: Leadership, Social Accountability, Advocacy,
Human Rights-Based Approach, Coaching
As a facilitator and coach of Civil Society Academy, she has focused on providing trainings and workshops on leadership and team management in several countries across Asia and Africa. She also facilitates trainings on advocacy and human rights-based approach. Sohini has a Social Science background with master’s degrees in Geography and Regional Planning. She is a certified Life and Leadership Coach. She has more than two decades of experience in the development sector, during which time she supported the work of numerous social change organizations, working on issues of local self-governance, right to information and land rights. She has worked on capacity building of civil society organizations, from grassroots community groups to large networks. Sohini is passionate about civil society strengthening and holds space for those who are ready to learn and be happy - this is reflected in her facilitation style.