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WASHINGTON, March 29, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — Results for Development (R4D) — a global nonprofit working to improve health care, education and nutrition in low- and middle-income countries — has published a suite of tools and resources to help donors and other international development organizations advance their localization goals.
Localization — or locally-led development as it is sometimes referred — is increasingly being embraced on a global scale. In 2022, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) announced its localization vision, saying it would commit at least a quarter of the agency’s program funds directly to local partners by the end of FY 2025.
But questions remain about how to successfully implement localization.
Some organizations, such as R4D, have been at the forefront of this movement, testing new approaches that center local change agents and partners. R4D’s president and CEO, Gina Lagomarsino, said, “R4D’s strategy is in direct response to what change agents have told us they want — to drive their own agenda and design their own solutions, while receiving targeted expert support as they navigate complex change processes. We play the role of connector, facilitator, coach and learning partner across country, regional and global ecosystems.”
One R4D-led program, the USAID-funded African Collaborative for Health Financing Solutions (ACS), has been a model for effective localization. ACS supported six countries in sub-Saharan Africa to improve health equity, focusing on different country priorities in each case and working through local partners to co-create solutions with diverse community input.
Collaborative learning — an approach R4D pioneered — was also a central approach of the ACS program. Collaborative Learning brings together communities of policymakers and practitioners to exchange knowledge and co-develop practical solutions to common challenges. In the ACS program, R4D facilitated multidirectional learning among…
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