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BUREAU FOR DEVELOPMENT, DEMOCRACY, AND INNOVATION
LOCAL, FAITH, AND TRANSFORMATIVE PARTNERSHIPS HUB
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Locally Led Development Initiatives
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MOROCCO: FIRST LADY OF THE UNITED STATES VISITS LOCALLY LED PROGRAMS
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PHOTO CREDIT: USAID/MOROCCO. TWO MEMBERS OF THE ENNAKHIL ASSOCIATION, A MOROCCAN NONPROFIT ADANCING WOMEN'S RIGHTS, FACE FIRST LADY OF THE UNITED STATES DR. JILL BIDEN AS SHE PREPARES TO DELIVER REMARKS TO THE CROWD.
In June, the First Lady of the United States Dr. Jill Biden visited with staff and participants of two USAID partners in Morocco: (1) the Ennakhil Association, a local organization striving to reduce gender-based violence (GBV) and promote women’s rights; and (2) GiveDirectly, implementing the Cooperative Financing Program to directly support over 1,400 Moroccan cooperatives negatively impacted by shocks such as COVID-19, drought, and inflation.
SPOTLIGHT ON THE ENNAKHIL ASSOCIATION: The Ennakhil Association, a Moroccan organization founded in 1997, champions women's rights by operating a support center for victims of GBV, providing vocational training (such as culinary arts) for women in at-risk situations, and advocating for catalytic GBV legislation and policies. Through Local Works, the Ennakhil Association utilized over $800,000 in USAID funding to expand its GBV listening center, establish a solidarity restaurant, and advocate for catalytic national GBV policy.
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“Empowered women power our communities,” First Lady Dr. Biden shared with the two organizations. “That’s why USAID has invested in this space and so many of you here. We’re proud to be your partner. But this isn’t just about government-to-government relationships. It’s people to people, heart to heart—and we want to work with you to help make our world better for everyone.”
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PHILIPPINES: CHAMPIONING SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURAL COOPERATIVE DEVELOPMENT
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PHOTO CREDIT: MEGAN SMITH, USAID. AGRITERRA STAFF MEMBER SPEAKS WITH POINT OF CONTACT FROM EAST-WEST SEED, AN AGRICULTURAL COOPERATIVE DEVELOPMENT CHAMPION, AS WELL AS THE LEADER AND A MEMBER OF A COOPERATIVE.
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PHOTO CREDIT: AGRITERRA. AT THE GROW CO-OP CULMINATING ACTIVITY, REPRESENTATIVES FROM AGRITERRA, USAID, AND OTHER PARTNERS AND STAKEHOLDERS SHARED LESSONS LEARNED AND RECOMMENDATIONS.
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In the Philippines, the Local Works funded GROW Co-op activity is ending, but its impact will be lasting. USAID’s partner Agriterra took a “big sister, little brother” approach, supporting seven established agricultural organizations to become “Agricultural Cooperative Development Champions,” who then served as mentors and connectors for 38 smaller cooperatives. Chief of the Party, Jun Virola said: “The experience (in GROW Coop) has shown us that we can build an ecosystem of support for agricultural cooperative development. We integrated capacity building in the value chain through the big sister, small brother approach, where real business transactions happen and results [are] measurable.”
By harnessing the power of cooperative action, GROW Co-op reached over 10,000 cooperative members to improve lives, strengthen communities, and expand rural livelihood opportunities.
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KENYA: FROM GOAT HERDER TO SEAMSTRESS
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PHOTO CREDIT: NORIN WALIMOHAMED, USAID. JANE ASIMIT LAUNCHED HER OWN SEAMSTRESS BUSINESS FROM HOME AFTER RECEIVING USAID-SUPPORTED VOCATIONAL TRAINING AND A SEWING MACHINE. IT HAS SINCE GROWN INTO A SUCCESSFUL LOCAL SHOP TRAINING YOUNG WOMEN.
Jane Asimit is a mother of six from northern Kenya’s Nakuprat Gotu Community Conservancy – the country’s most marginalized and under-developed region, with arid and semi-arid lands, economic instability, resource-based conflicts, and few occupational options for women. Without education, Jane had relied on herding goats and selling milk for income, but she always had a desire to study and learn.
In 2021, Jane learned from the conservancy manager about a mobile vocational program, Ujuzi Manyattani (Skills in the Village), that aims to help young men and women from pastoral communities pursue alternative livelihoods in Northern Rangelands Trust member conservancies. It is one of the key programs implemented by Northern Rangelands Trust Trading (NRTT) through a grant from USAID, supported by Local Works.
“Because USAID has joined hands with them and made an impact in their world, many women and youth are now independent,” she said. Jane counts herself as proof that these programs help strengthen vulnerable communities.
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🏆 LOCALLY LED DEVELOPMENT CHAMPION OF THE MONTH 🏆
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Locally Led Development Champions – Local Works Mission staff nominated by the Local Works DC team – embody the spirit of locally led development through commitment, dedication, innovation, advocacy, and exemplary initiative. They advance and operationalize USAID’s localization vision every day.
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Ibrahim Fofanah champions youth inclusion through USAID/Guinea’s Local Works programming. When the Mission launched its listening phase of the program, and convened a Youth Advisory Committee (YAC), Ibrahim led internal processes, as well as outreach to select and retain YAC members, and organized workshops where youth shared their priorities and ideas. But this success was not achieved without some challenges. According to Ibrahim, complex USAID processes “do not take into account some certain local/rural situations.” For example, “limited or no access to facilities such as internet for rural youth to access information to even respond to the online survey” caused some challenges when Ibrahim was considering best ways to recruit YAC members. Once Ibrahim and his team began gaining interest from youth in joining the YAC, Ibrahim realized that “figuring out how to ensure gender balance, ethnic or tribal balance, and creating inclusivity in the YAC such as participation of disadvantage or people with disability [would also be] a major hurdle.” Additionally, since Ibrahim was interested in expanding USAID’s engagement with youth in more rural areas, he “need[ed] to organize consultation workshops or discussions in very remote areas,” but conducting a competitive comparison between potential meeting spaces like hotels “could be a challenge as the facilities are limited.” Once a space was secured, payment method and timing preferences of the service provider came into conflict with standard USAID practices.
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Were these challenges overcome? The Local Works team raised awareness with Mission leadership and other colleagues that some Agency or Mission processes were not conducive to doing all the work they wanted to do with the rural communities. Ibrahim explains that through those discussions, “...we came up with innovative alternative ideas such as payment processes [and] information sharing and gathering processes.” Some of these ideas included “printing hard copies of questionnaires to help boost the online recruitment processes of YAC members and distributing them in local communities to encourage more participation, providing babysitting for mothers, providing translation services for people that could not communicate in French, [and ensuring] maximum direct telephone communications,” amongst other approaches.
How have youth involved in the YAC grown? In the beginning, Ibrahim noticed that “most rural youth could be less confident in themselves, especially rural youth that are less privileged or not exposed to opportunities (such as Information Technology, traveling outside their communities, lack of access to information etc).” As Ibrahim developed relationships with the YAC members, he made sure that they “understood that their opinions matter and are very important for decision making.” Throughout his experience mentoring and advising youth, Ibrahim has made sure to “be patient with them, and make them feel useful among the midst of the others,” which has resulted in “their active participation and contribution toward initiatives and ideas.”
His advice for locally led development practitioners? “Development practitioners [should] not stay in comfortable offices and design or develop programs for communities… Go directly to communities, talk to local stakeholders, take into consideration local context, and make sure the local people engage in the process of designing development programs for communities.”
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USAID UPDATES
- What does it mean for USAID programs to be locally led? We asked! USAID’s new Locally Led Programs indicator will enable us to better understand the approaches we use to advance locally led development and will inspire continued progress toward our commitment of elevating local leadership in our work.
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We want to hear from YOU! Take WorkwithUSAID’s Partnering Experience Survey to let us know how we can improve USAID’s partnership experience. Current, past, and prospective partners are able to complete this survey. The survey will close August 31.
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PARTNERSHIPS
- “Nobody hungry. Nobody alone.” Thousands of citizens in Bosnia and Herzegovina mobilized around a two-year initiative led by USAID/Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Local Works partner Mozaik Foundation championing a law that would exempt food donations from value added tax (VAT). Partnering with Hastor Foundation, Pomozi.ba Association, Network for Building Peace, Trag Foundation, and Catalyst Balkans, their locally led advocacy inspired massive support from across the political spectrum, leading to a unanimous Bosnia and Herzegovina Parliament vote to pass the law. Now, over $7.2M of food per year can be donated rather than destroyed. Read more.
- On World Environment Day, USAID/Honduras’ Local Works partner Fundación Cervecería Hondureña launched a new activity: Reciclar para Crecer (Recycle to Grow). Check out some photos from the launch event and a video about the activity!
- In July, USAID/West Africa’s Local Works partner West Africa Private Healthcare Federation (FOASPS) organized the High Level Policy Conference that took place in Côte d’Ivoire. Various stakeholders—including heads of government, health care providers, and representatives of the private sector—renewed their commitment to universal health coverage in West Africa. Read the press release.
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BLOGS AND OTHER STORIES
- Facilitating responsible transitions in development, shifting ownership from the international to local level, can help enable more locally led, sustainable, and effective development partnerships. This is the goal of Stopping As Success: Locally Led Transitions in Development (SAS+). SAS+ recently spoke with a member of their Advisory Group, Jimmy Sankaituah, to hear why transition is important to him.
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Preparing for the next crisis: “The Agency’s Local Capacity Strengthening Policy is helping us forge stronger, more equitable local partnerships so that we are better prepared to respond when the inevitable happens.” Learn about how a local capacity strengthening approach transformed crisis response for USAID/Middle East in a new blog.
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How is USAID advancing locally led LGBTQI+ inclusive development? Check out this new interview to learn more about the Alliance for Global Equality, the result of extensive collaboration between USAID, Outright International, and the LGBTQ+ Victory Institute.
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RESOURCES AND CASE STUDIES
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FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES
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DYK: DDI/LFT supports USAID Missions to solicit, co-create, and fund flexible and innovative locally led development approaches through assistance awards to local and nontraditional partners? If your organization is a local organization in Nepal, there is one open opportunity under the Locally Led Development Annual Program Statement (APS):
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JOB OPPORTUNTIES
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Locally Led Development Initiatives are part of the Local, Faith, and Transformative Partnerships (LFT) Hub.
The LFT Hub focuses on strengthening USAID’s ability to partner with non-traditional and diverse actors including local, faith-based, and community organizations; schools and hospitals; foundations; diaspora communities; cooperatives; and volunteer organizations. Learn more about how LFT is harnessing the power of partnerships through the following:
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