1st Edition
Community-Led Development in Practice We Power our Own Change
In the last decade, the international development sector has been re-examining its ways of thinking, being, and doing, and we have seen a growing consensus around the need to centre communities in development. However, there is little clarity on what such centring entails and how it can be achieved. This edited volume addresses this gap by highlighting what community-led practices look like and how they compare across different sociocultural and organisational landscapes.
Bringing together the work of over 30 international authors, ranging from experienced community-led development practitioners to acclaimed scholars, the book reflects on and critically analyses grassroots initiatives, national-level organisations, and larger-scale international operations. The case studies demonstrate the similarities and differences in community-led practices according to organisational size and spread, while documenting the process of human change that these practices unleash. The volume’s overarching structure reflects the characteristics and processes of community-led development, captured via nine different dimensions: participation inclusion and voice; local resources; sustainability and exit strategies; accountability; responsiveness to context; collaboration (including working with sub-national governments); community-led monitoring and evaluation practices; and facilitation.
The book will be of interest to funders, organisations and practitioners looking for non-western, non-dominant, everyday stories of change. It will also be useful to policy makers, students, and researchers from the fields of community development and international development theory and practice.
Where Women Have a Voice
H.E DR JOYCE BANDA, MALAWI
Foreword
SCOTT GUGGENHEIM
INTRODUCTION
1. Introduction: The Current Landscape and Practice of Community-Led Development
GUNJAN VEDA
2. The Quest for Human Dignity: A Practitioner’s History of Community-led Development
JOHN COONROD
PART I. COLLABORATION/ WORKING WITH SUB-NATIONAL GOVERNMENTS
Introduction to Part I
ELENE CLOETE AND GUNJAN VEDA
3. “The OneVillage Partners Method”: Building New Community Spaces for Consensus and Collaboration
CHAD MCCORDIC, SHEKU MOHAMED GASSIMU, ROGERS NYANGAJIA, AND VANESSA WOOD WITH PHILOMON MCSENESIE, FATMATA MOUIGUA, AND MOIGUA BOCKARIE
4. Communal Land Organisations and Payments for Environmental Services in the Huasteca Potosina Region of Mexico
AIDA RAMOS VIERA
5. The Power of Synergy: Unlocking Sustainable Development through Collaboration in Uganda
AMANI INITIATIVE
6. To Transform Systems, Start with the Heart: CLD-Benin’s Story of Collective Impact
THE MOVEMENT FOR COMMUNITY-LED DEVELOPMENT BENIN (CLD-BENIN)
PART II. RESPONSIVENESS TO LOCAL CONTEXT
Introduction to Part II
ELENE CLOETE AND GUNJAN VEDA
7. When the Helped Help the Helpers Help: The Global Diffusion and Transformation of Community-Led Development Practice in an American INGO
DAVID J HOWLETT AND MATTHEW BREAY BOLTON
8. Aga Khan Foundation: Adapting Community-Led Development to Diverse Contexts
Aga Khan Development Network, Global.
MATT REEVES
PART III. Participation, Inclusion and Voice/ Local Knowledge and Resources
Introduction to Part III
ELENE CLOETE AND GUNJAN VEDA
9. The Chronicles of Chizami: How Women from a Small Naga Village Built the Road to Resilience
MONISHA BEHAL
10. What Participation Means in a Divided Indigenous Community: The Case of an Engineers Without Borders Water Project among the Ch’orti’ Maya of Eastern Guatemala
BRENT METZ
11. Local Knowledge and Resources for Community-led Development in South Africa: Looking through an Asset-based Lens
HANNA NEL
PART IV. Accountability/ Sustainability and Exit Strategies
Introduction to Part IV
ELENE CLOETE AND GUNJAN VEDA
12. From Roots to Rasin: The Story of Transition and Transformation in Haiti
CHAD W. BISSONNETTE AND LOUINO ROBILLARD
13. Accountability in Community and Local Leadership: The Nuru Collective Approach to Uniting People through Place and Purpose
SIMON ELI, AMY GAMAN, CASEY HARRISON, MATT LINEAL, ABIY MESHESHA, PAULINE WAMBETI
PART V. MONITORING AND EVALUATION/ FACILITATION
Introduction to Part V
ELENE CLOETE AND GUNJAN VEDA
14. Who Owns the Response? The Constellation: How Self-Assessment Catalyzes Ownership
ESSA M. RAFIQUE, RITUU B. NANDA, MARLOU DE ROUW, PHILIP FORTH
15. We Build the Road and the Road Builds Us: The Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement’s Participatory Community Development Model
VINYA S. ARIYARATNE AND UDESH FERNANDO
16. Conclusion
ELENE CLOETE AND GUNJAN VEDA
Biography
Elene Cloete is Senior Director of Research and Advocacy for Outreach International, Kansas City, USA. Her practice and research interests include: The role of motivation, basic psychological needs, and self-regulation in development; Community leadership; The hidden benefits of improved sanitation; and locally-led monitoring and evaluation practice. Elene is a social anthropologist by training.
Gunjan Veda is Global Secretary for the Movement for Community-led Development, a Majority World-led network of networks with 2000+ local organisations and their INGO allies. Her work includes creating collaborative partnerships, and interrogating structural violence in existing systems, forms of knowledge production and publication to make them more inclusive and equitable. Gunjan has previously worked within the non-profit sector in India, and was a policy-maker in the Indian Government’s Planning Commission.
