How we create Change

Karama builds networks of solidarity between local responders, mutual aid groups, and community organisations working in crisis and conflict settings around the world. We connect groups facing similar challenges — from displacement and siege to resource scarcity and recovery — so they can learn from one another, share practical solutions, and act together.

Through peer-to-peer learning, collaborative advocacy, and flexible grant making, we help locally led organisations strengthen their resilience, exchange knowledge, and co-create responses rooted in lived experience. Our work includes facilitating confidential peer learning spaces, rapid-response support networks, operational resilience funding, and jointly designed solidarity projects across different regions and crises.

Rather than creating top-down systems, Karama supports a member-led “web of solidarity” where communities shape decisions, define priorities, and support one another directly. We act as facilitators, connectors, and resource mobilisers — helping local responders access the relationships, tools, funding, and visibility they need to sustain their work and drive lasting change

 Karama supports communities to act before crises escalate. We work with local organisations, mutual aid groups, and community networks across the Middle East and Africa to strengthen anticipatory action in conflict-affected and fragile settings.

Our approach combines community knowledge with accessible data to identify early signs of worsening conditions — from rising food prices and displacement pressures to growing insecurity and social strain. Rather than relying only on external forecasts, we centre the lived experiences of communities who are often the first to recognise when a crisis is emerging.

Together with local partners, we help communities define their own warning signs, decision-making thresholds, and early response actions. This can include activating cash support, scaling up food distribution, supporting displaced families, or strengthening local protection systems before situations deteriorate further.

Karama’s role is to facilitate collaboration, provide flexible funding, support shared analysis, and connect local groups with wider networks and resources. Decision-making remains community-led, ensuring responses are grounded in local realities and priorities.

By enabling earlier, locally driven action, we aim to reduce the human and financial cost of crises, strengthen resilience, and shift power closer to the communities most affected.

 Aiding & Abetting is Karama’s podcast exploring the politics, power dynamics, and uncomfortable realities of modern humanitarian aid.

Hosted by Karama founder, Tom Colley, the series examines how the international aid system operates in practice — from questions of localisation and representation to the influence of foreign policy, donor power, and colonial legacies.

Through conversations with aid workers, researchers, activists, and local responders, the podcast challenges traditional charity narratives and highlights alternatives rooted in solidarity, mutual aid, and locally led humanitarian action.

The podcast forms part of Karama’s wider mission to promote more dignified, accountable, and community-led approaches to humanitarian response.