Community-Led Development in Practice

We Power Our Own Change

Elene Cloete, Gunjan Veda

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2024
• eBook ISBN: 9781040264430
• Edition: 0
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Globale Entwicklungsstudien

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 policymakers, students, and researchers from the fields of community development and international development theory and practice.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• Notes on Contributors
• Where Women Have a Voice by H.E. Dr. Joyce Banda
• Foreword by Scott Guggenheim
• Acknowledgement
• Introduction
• 1 Introduction: The Current Landscape and Practice of Community-Led Development
• 2 The Quest for Human Dignity: A Practitioner’s History of Community-Led Development
• Part I Collaboration/Working with Sub-National Governments
• 3 “The OneVillage Partners Method”: Building New Community Spaces for Consensus and Collaboration
• 4 Communal Land Organisations and Payments for Environmental Services in the Huasteca Potosina Region of Mexico
• 5 The Power of Synergy: Unlocking Sustainable Development through Collaboration in Uganda
• 6 To Transform Systems, Start with the Heart: CLD-Benin’s Story of Collective Power and Collective Impact
• Part II Responsiveness to Local Context
• 7 When the Helped Help the Helpers Help: The Global Diffusion and Transformation of Community-Led Development Practices in an American INGO
• 8 Aga Khan Foundation: Adapting Community-Led Development to Diverse Contexts
• Part III Participation, Inclusion and Voice/Local Knowledge and Resources
• 9 The Chronicles of Chizami: How Women from a Small Naga Village Built the Road to Resilience
• 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
• 11 Local Knowledge and Resources for Community-Led Development in South Africa: Looking through an Asset-Based Lens
• Part IV Accountability/Sustainability, and Exit Strategies
• 12 From Roots to Rasin: The Story of Transition and Transformation in Haiti1
• 13 Accountability in Community and Local Leadership: The Nuru Collective Approach to Uniting People through Place and Purpose
• Part V Monitoring and Evaluation/Facilitation
• 14 Who Owns the Response?: How Self-Assessment Catalyses Ownership in the Work of The Constellation
• 15 We Build the Road and the Road Builds Us: The Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement’s Participatory Community Development Model
• 16 Conclusion
• Participatory CLD Assessment Tool
• Index