Getting to Locally Led Development: What We Can Do to Move the Needle
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This post was originally written by USAID LEARN and posted here on the USAID Learning Lab blog, on August 6th, 2018, and is reposted with permission. To watch the presentation about “Time to Listen: Five Years Later” by Polly Byers, CDA’s former Executive Director, visit this page.
This blog synthesizes key discussion points from a Moving the Needle 2018 afternoon breakout session on local ownership.
Time to Listen summarizes and analyzes the experiences of nearly 6,000 people in 20 aid-receiving countries, and the reflections of aid workers themselves, on the effectiveness of international assistance efforts. While they do appreciate international assistance, cynicism among people in aid recipient communities is high and they are eager to see real efforts to make international aid become more effective and achieve more sustained results. Authors conclude that, “People do not want to need assistance! They do not want to depend on outsiders for help” (pg. 21). They want to be more engaged and to have more voice and decision-making power in how aid efforts are conceived, funded, carried out and evaluated. They are calling for a shift from an externally driven aid delivery system to a more collaborative aid system (see table below).
ELEMENTS OF TWO PARADIGMS: A COMPARISON
Externally Driven Aid Delivery System |
Collaborative Aid System |
Local people seen as beneficiaries and aid recipients |
Local people seen as colleagues and drivers of their own development |
Focus on identifying needs |
Focus on supporting/reinforcing capacities and identifying local priorities |
Pre-planned/pre-determined programs |
Context-relevant programs developed jointly by recipient communities and aid providers |
Provider-driven decision-making |
Collaborative decision-making |
Focus on spending on a predetermined schedule |
Fit money and timing to strategy and realities on the ground |
Staff evaluated and rewarded for managing projects on time and on budget |
Staff evaluated and rewarded for quality of relationships and results that recipients say make lasting positive changes in their lives |
Monitoring and evaluation by providers on project spending and delivery of planned assistance |
Monitoring, evaluation, and follow-up by providers and recipients on the results and long-term effects of assistance |
Focus on growth |
Planned draw down and mutually agreed exit/end of assistance strategy |
From Time to Listen: Hearing People on the Receiving End of International Aid (pg.138), available for purchase on Amazon and downloadable for free here.
Time to Listen concludes by asking: “Can a field of change agents change itself?” (pg. 146). The focus of an afternoon session during Moving the Needle 2018 was to begin to answer this question by identifying specific recommendations for USAID and implementing partners to take forward to make locally led development and the approaches identified in the collaborative aid system column above standard practice, rather than an exception.
Participants generated the following recommendations broken out by USAID vs. implementing partners (in some cases ideas are relevant to both) and whether the idea is “low-hanging” (meaning more easily achievable) vs. systemic. This list is not exhaustive of the ideas generated in the session.
USAID |
Implementing Partners |
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“Low-hanging fruit” / more easily implemented options |
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Recommendations that require systemic change |
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We hope that you consider trying one of the ideas above, or use them as inspiration for identifying other ways to support greater locally led development. What have you tried? What’s worked? What hasn’t?
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