Connected to Grow: How The T1D Community Fund Builds Organizational Capacity Across 37 Countries

Thousands of miles separate Uganda from Argentina, but that distance shrank when Allan Kiwanuka of Kabukye Trust connected with Estefania Agostino from CUI.D.AR Argentina through The Type 1 Diabetes (T1D) Community Fund’s global network. Kabukye Trust is now learning from CUI.D.AR’s experience and developing new patient registers to strengthen type 1 diabetes care in Uganda, showing just how far a learning community can reach.

Since 2022, The T1D Community Fund at Panorama Global has supported 55 community-based organizations across 37 low- and middle-income countries working to close care gaps for people living with type 1 diabetes. Alongside flexible funding, the Fund invests in something less visible but equally important: capacity strengthening.

For The T1D Community Fund, capacity strengthening isn’t a buzzword. It helps build the relationships, skills, and tools that enable organizations to do their best work. It’s the heart of what makes the program impactful.

An Ecosystem of Support

The Fund was designed around a core hypothesis: that international funding could effectively reach hyper-local, often under-resourced, organizations living and working in the communities they serve. While funding enables grantees to deliver on their mission, capacity strengthening and technical assistance provide the tools to sustain, scale, and evolve their work.

Grantees shape what this technical assistance looks like through routine surveys and feedback, ensuring that the support reflects what is most relevant to their work. Through expert coaching, peer learning, resource sharing, and linkages to global stages, The T1D Community Fund has defined an ecosystem of support to strengthen grantees’ essential skills in fundraising, monitoring and evaluation, communications, and advocacy. These experiences have created space for grantees to forge connections across a global network of peers facing similar challenges, providing opportunities to learn from new models, new solutions, and new possibilities.

The team at Reconciliation and Development Association in Cameroon posing for a picture at an organization event. Photo provided by Reconciliation and Development Association.

Expert Coaching Sessions to Drive Solutions

The Fund’s investment in capacity strengthening shows up in tangible ways. Panorama brings in consultants who understand the challenges of community-based and resource-constrained organizations, as well as local contexts, to lead learning sessions. Grantees highlighted fundraising as their number one priority, so the Panorama team curated a series of fundraising coaching sessions led by Oluwagbemibori Olaoye of the Nigeria-based Boundless Gem Advisory Services. After those sessions, Meethi Zindagi in Pakistan developed a Ramadan 2025 campaign grounded in community storytelling, raising $20,000. And Midlands Diabetes Interest Group (MidDIG) in Zimbabwe built new digital fundraising infrastructure from the ground up. MidDIG now has a robust digital presence that has helped generate a list of two dozen new prospective funders and cultivate relationships with corporate and pharmacy partners.

Technical assistance for monitoring and evaluation has been equally generative. After a learning session and follow-up coaching, Let's Be Transformed (MAGUFINA) in Malawi began age-disaggregated tracking. What they found enhanced their programming: adolescents needed more support managing their day-to-day care, and young children needed better nutrition care. For MAGUFINA, an improved skill unlocked greater impact for their community.

Shared Learning Transforms Outcomes

Expert coaching sessions are just one piece of the picture. Some of the most practical learning happens between grantees through both the formal and informal opportunities that the Fund creates. Beyond formal peer learning sessions, grantees are connecting at the country level to support and strengthen each other's work.

In Nigeria, Generation for Environmental Education and Enhanced Renewal (GREENER) partnered with fellow Nigerian grantee partner Center for Rights Advancement and Sustainable Development (CREST), who provided clinical mentorship to healthcare workers supporting GREENER’s programming. In Uganda, multiple grantees partnered to leverage their unique expertise and capabilities. Baitambogwe Community Health Care Initiative (BACHI) provided technical mentorship to Kabukye Trust on integrating mental health and psychosocial support into chronic disease care. This enabled Kabukye Trust to offer adolescent suicide-risk screening and caregiver resilience trainings for the first time.

Connecting Local Work to Global Dialogue

The Fund also invests in connecting grantees to the broader global non-communicable diseases (NCD) and type 1 diabetes ecosystem of partners and funders. Community-based organizations bring deep, specific expertise that global forums don't always reflect, and those broader conversations can open doors for increased funding and in-kind support.

Travel fellowships have convened grantee partners at international forums, allowing their voices to shape global dialogues. At the 2025 NCD Alliance Forum, 30 T1D Community Fund grantees from 23 countries gathered to develop a Global Call to Action for strengthening types 1 diabetes programming in low- and middle-income countries. For Fondation DiabeteMNT in Guinea, the experience reframed how the organization thinks about its own advocacy:

"Global connections have guided our work…We aligned our advocacy with the international Call to Action, ensuring that local efforts respond to global priorities."

Estefania Agostino presenting on a panel at the 2025 International Society for Pediatric and Adolescent Diabetes Conference. Photo provided by CUI.D.AR.

For T1D grantee partners, travel fellowships to join global conferences like the NCD Alliance Forum and the International Society for Pediatric and Adolescent Diabetes can open doors to new partnerships. Innovations for Development leveraged the opportunity to meet representatives from major pharmaceutical companies, Novo Nordisk and AstraZeneca, which led to new funding and programmatic expansion into new technical areas.

Danny Gotto and the team at AstraZeneca discussing diabetes care at the 2025 East African Diabetes Study Group Congress in Kampala, Uganda in 2025. Photo provided by Innovations for Development.

Building for the Long Term

The T1D Community Fund’s ecosystem model for capacity strengthening reflects a simple premise: when organizations can access relevant coaching and mentorship, leverage opportunities to engage in global forums, and meaningfully connect with peers facing similar challenges, the impact of their work grows.

As the Public Foundation “Diabetic Parent Committee” in Kazakhstan notes:

“The opportunity for ongoing exchange with colleagues from other countries has been truly invaluable. [It] not only strengthens professional capacity, but also builds a sense of global solidarity among patient organizations.”

For the 55 organizations across 37 countries supported by the Fund, capacity strengthening looks different — a fundraising strategy in Pakistan, a grantee-to-grantee mentorship model in Malawi, the development of a patient register in Uganda. The through line, though, is consistent. Organizations that are resourced, connected, and equipped to grow are better positioned to serve the people at the heart of their work: those living with type 1 diabetes.

In the words of Rwandan partner the Geraldine Trada Foundation:

“The training and mentorship we received through the Fund have helped us approach partnerships with confidence, structure programs in a more data-driven way, and prioritize the most vulnerable beneficiaries. It has also given our small grassroots organization credibility when engaging local authorities, partners, and other stakeholders.”