The Movement for Community-led Development

A thought piece by MCLD’s Regional Coordinators, with an introduction by Sera Bulbul Kungl, communications and learning officer

The Movement for Community-led Development (MCLD) withstood the many shifts that the development sector (and the world) faced in 2025 and came out as a more unified network. MCLD has always strived to reimagine existing structures, question power dynamics, and champion local voices and knowledge. Looking to 2026, we will continue to build bridges and challenge inequalities. MCLD members have planned ways to influence policies, create inclusive spaces, build relationships, and grow the understanding of community-led development. Local organizations have solutions to the widespread change that we need in international development, and in 2026, MCLD is positioned to ensure they are heard. 

If 2025 was a year of rebuilding and planning, then 2026 will be the year that MCLD’s 3000+ members spring to action in the way we always have: together, with vibrant energy, as a symphony of voices. 

By Namya Gunawardena, MCLD’s Asia Regional Coordinator

As we step into 2026, the Movement for Community-Led Development (MCLD) in Asia stands at an exciting and formative moment. Our regional membership continues to grow steadily, bringing together organisations working across diverse social, political, and ecological contexts. This growth is not just about numbers, but a shared commitment to placing communities at the centre of development practice, policy, and power.

Over the coming year, MCLD Asia is engaging in collective discussions to shape joint action around three priority themes for 2026. These themes are governance and accountability, climate resilience and justice, and livelihoods and local economies, which respond directly to the lived realities of communities across the region. What makes this process significant is the intention to move beyond parallel efforts and toward collective action: learning together, amplifying community voices, and influencing systems through shared agendas, while allowing space for local context and autonomy.

An important regional opportunity in 2026 will be a workshop for members, organised in collaboration with the Collective Paths Foundation, focused on exploring and strategising around alternative funding approaches. This will not be a one-off convening, but the start of a longer journey. The workshop will open space for members to critically examine current funding models, imagine more community-aligned and sustainable alternatives, and co-develop practical strategies. Crucially, the process will include pathways for implementation, follow-up, and shared decision-making, enabling members to test ideas, learn collectively, and refine approaches over time.

At the national level, Sri Lankan member organisations are taking an important step by initiating a discussion series focused on strengthening the understanding and practice of community-led development. These conversations aim to deepen collective learning and ground CLD principles in real-world experiences from the field. This is an opportunity to nurture critical reflection, solidarity, and leadership within the movement.

Together, these developments signal a year of possibility. 2026 offers MCLD Asia the chance to consolidate its growing membership, deepen learning, and move toward purposeful collective action. All with a focus on communities, shared values, and driven by solidarity across the region.

By Steve Ogutu, MCLD’s East Africa Regional Coordinator

Opportunities in 2026 for East Africa – and How MCLD Will Seize the Moment

The challenges of 2025, marked by sharp reductions in Official Development Assistance (ODA) and continued economic strain following the COVID-19 pandemic, have created a defining moment for the development sector in most parts of the world, including East Africa. As traditional financing tightens, 2026 presents a clear opportunity to accelerate a shift toward locally led, community-driven development models that are more resilient, inclusive, and responsive to citizen priorities. MCLD is well-positioned to seize this moment, building directly on the groundwork laid across the region in 2025.

In the area of gender equality, 2026 offers an opportunity to move beyond policy commitments toward tangible change at the community and subnational levels. Building on efforts to mainstream gender in national policies and programmes, particularly in Rwanda, MCLD will focus on supporting governments and civil society actors to operationalize gender-responsive planning, budgeting, and monitoring. By strengthening community voice and women’s leadership in decision-making spaces, MCLD will help ensure that development investments deliver equitable outcomes for women and girls.

Devolution and community-led governance will remain a critical entry point in 2026, especially as counties and local governments seek to improve service delivery under constrained resources. Drawing on lessons from the Kenya School of Devolution and Community-led Development, implemented with the County Government of Makueni, MCLD will support additional counties to institutionalize meaningful public participation and social accountability. Experiences from counties such as Taita Taveta will inform the scaling of participatory policy design, implementation, and evaluation, ensuring devolved systems work more effectively for citizens.

Food and nutrition security will continue to dominate national and regional priorities as climate variability and economic pressures persist. Building on policy engagement in Uganda in 2025, MCLD will use 2026 to strengthen community-led food systems by connecting local producers, women, and youth to policy and planning processes at the subnational and national levels. This approach will help anchor food security strategies in local realities while promoting inclusive and climate-responsive solutions.

The democratic governance landscape in 2026 also presents an opportunity to deepen citizen participation and rebuild trust in public institutions. Building on participatory budgeting research and policy engagement in National Associations like Ethiopia, MCLD will work with governments and CSOs to institutionalize participatory budgeting and social accountability mechanisms. These efforts will enable communities to influence budget priorities, track public spending, and engage constructively with duty-bearers, strengthening democratic practice and good governance.

Across the region, including ongoing engagement in Burundi, MCLD will use 2026 to embed community-led development more firmly within government ecosystems. By working closely with member CSOs and reform-oriented public institutions, MCLD will promote CLD as a practical governance approach that delivers results even in a context of declining external financing.

In this moment of constraint and transition, 2026 represents an opportunity for MCLD to consolidate gains from 2025 and scale what works, placing communities at the center of gender equality, devolution, food security, and democratic governance, and ensuring development in East Africa is locally owned, accountable, and sustainable. These are critical pillars for socio-economic stability in the region.

By Luana Esquenazi, MCLD’s LAC Regional Coordinator

2026 for MCLD Latin America and the Caribbean will be all about the power of togetherness. While the LAC membership grows and consolidates, we also feel a greater sense of belonging and the importance of being with others during critical times like these. 

In this tune, our members who care for the communities they represent every day have put their attention on helping each other, collaborating, and learning from each other. From members offering trainings to other members, to others offering their time and skills to help each other, we are seeing a deep sense of community and the leading value that together we are stronger. 

In the pipeline for MCLD’s first quarter of 2026 are a series of workshops and open sessions to put together knowledge and skills that can boost members’ capacities to apply for funds, a series on establishing a volunteer program, and a new working group on indigenous migrant communities in the LAC region. We hope to organize a training on the Participatory CLD Assessment Tool to maintain our attention on the CLD values that we try to practice daily. 

The pillars of solidarity, practice, and self-reliance guide our region. At MDLC Latin America and the Caribbean, we believe that the critical times civil society is facing, with the implosion of the international cooperation system and beyond, can solely be dealt with in community and by building solidarity. 

By Yewo Grace Gondwe, MCLD’s Southern Africa Regional Coordinator

Looking ahead, the Southern Africa region of MCLD continues to strengthen locally driven systems that place communities at the center of decision-making, accountability, and sustainable development. In 2026, the region plans to strengthen members through a targeted training on Community-Led Development (CLD) advocacy, equipping grassroots actors with the skills, tools, and knowledge required to influence policy effectively.

The region will facilitate assessment of CLD practice among members to identify strengths, gaps, and opportunities for learning and collaboration, ensuring that our approaches are evidence-based and responsive to community realities. The region will intensify in-country advocacy aligned with three strategic themes: promoting good local governance and social accountability; strengthening community resilience and locally led responses to climate change; and amplifying the voice and agency of marginalized groups, particularly women, youth, and persons with disabilities. Through partnerships, collective action, and shared learning, the region aims to advance policies and systems that recognize communities not as beneficiaries, but as leaders and co-creators of development, whilst ensuring inclusive, resilient, and equitable outcomes across Southern Africa.

In 2026, MCLD seeks to create a sustainable movement that promotes accountability, shared learning, and collective action for community-led transformation across Southern Africa. Our growth plan includes mapping local and regional organizations committed to advancing community-led development. 

The Global Youth Taskforce will collectively advocate for the integration of youth perspectives in the community-led development agenda. The taskforce will partner with the tertiary institutions to expand membership, promote innovative solutions to local challenges, and amplify youth voices.

It is important for members to stay alert and actively engaged in regional advocacy events, as these platforms create timely opportunities to influence policies, funding priorities, and development agendas that directly affect communities. These are some   of the regional advocacy platforms which our members could look into and plan to participate;

1. Africa Impact Summit in June in Zambia
2. Rights Con to be hosted in May in Zambia: This is the 14^th edition of the world’s leading summit on human rights in the digital age. The summit will also host a Young Leaders Summit happening concurrently to create a special platform for youth. 
3. International Traditional Leaders Conference Convention (31 October – 1 November 2026): Scheduled to be held at Nelson Mandela University, this conference will focus on the role of traditional institutions in promoting development, covering topics such as sustainable economic growth, climate resilience, and infrastructure development

By Pascal Djohossou, MCLD’s West Africa Regional Coordinator

West African members of MCLD are approaching 2026 as a year of MCLD consolidation. Benin, Liberia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and Togo, in particular, are assessing more ways to collaborate, while the Central African Republic continues to grow. 

National Associations will begin the year with Annual General Meetings made possible through microgrants from the MCLD Secretariat. All National Associations will begin to implement their strategic plans for 2026 – 2029. I, as the West Africa Regional Coordinator, will support peer learning and coaching for capacity strengthening and resource mobilisation.

2026 will also be a year of expansion for MCLD in West Africa. We will be working with countries interested in MCLD, including Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Cameroon, Congo Brazzaville, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. As part of capacity strengthening, Benin hopes to host a training-of-trainers on MCLD’s Participatory CLD Assessment Tool. The West Africa coordination is also positioning itself to bring a strategic contribution to the MCLD Youth Task Force, mainly on issues regarding youth, technology and climate change. 

MCLD members in West Africa have our eyes on international and regional events, including the World Social Forum 2026 in Cotonou this August. MCLD will take part in the preparation of the Forum and plans to participate in it as well.