For the past decade, MCLD’s work has been shaped by incredible people. Voices of the Decade is a new interview series featuring the leaders, partners, and changemakers who helped build our community. Their answers are human, thoughtful, and an encouraging reminder of MCLD’s impact. In this interview, MCLD’s Global Secretary Gunjan Veda reflects on our transition into a member-designed movement organization and the resilience of communities driving systemic change. She shares lessons on collaboration, inclusion, and community-led development.
Gunjan Veda – A Decade of Resilience and Collective Strength
What moment defined MCLD’s last decade for you?
There are so many, but one that comes to mind immediately is January 1, 2024. On this day we stepped into our new structure. Since its inception in May 2015, MCLD has always been a movement, a place for collective action. We did not have a formal organizational entity. The Hunger Project incubated us and hosted our Secretariat. But when the pandemic hit, the world began to realise that communities are the first responders in any crisis. Between our Participatory CLD Assessment tool and this realisation, suddenly the demands on our movement went up manifold. We needed to channelise external resources to meet this demand and that required an organizational structure. But how do we co-create a structure that is fit for purpose, not just fit for funding?
We decided to once again apply the principles of CLD to our work. We asked, we listened, and our members showed us the way. After 1.5 years of listening cafes, design workshops and brainstorms internally and with external actors, we co-created a structure that we believe reflects our values. We call it a “movement organization.” It is a work in progress – we learn, we fall, we help each other up and we try again.
Going in we knew this was an experiment, but we also knew that we could not let the fear of failure kill our dreams. And we have big dreams—-we want to transform the current system that operates on the principle of survival of the fittest to one that recognises the power of collective action. And on January 1, 2024, we did exactly that. With a lot of trepidation and excitement, we moved from being a movement to a movement organization.
MCLD has always been about possibility. Today, two years later, as I see this new entity living, breathing and showing what is possible when individual agency meets collective action, I can proudly say we are living our values, just as we set out to do!
What gives you hope for the next 10 years?
MCLD has always envisioned a different kind of world – a world rooted in human dignity that recognizes our interconnectedness with each other and with the planet. This kind of world is possible, but it requires systemic change beyond the rules of aid and assistance.
For the longest time, we kept hearing that we have to operate within the existing system because it was somehow invincible. The collapse of that system over the last year has caused tremendous devastation and turbulence. At the same time, Majority World organizations, individuals, and communities have realized they must exercise their own agency and power if they want a different future. This gives me hope because when people rely on their own agency and collective power instead of external aid, we see transformation. People have knowledge and ideas, but they have been taught that they are less than, their ideas are less than, their knowledge is less than. That external support makes life easier. So they do whatever is necessary to get that support. Now there is a recognition of how fickle external aid is. The challenges notwithstanding, this moment gives me hope because we are hearing more and more voices from the Majority World talking about sustainability and self-reliance.
The courage of our members gives me hope. Through the worst circumstances, whether it was COVID-19 or the cuts to official development assistance last year or horrifying wars or violence in the different places they are in, they have not given up hope. They continue to show up day after day and do the work that they have been committed to. And they innovate. They find and pool their own resources. We have examples of this all across MCLD:
- In Colombia, our members were not receiving any funding to address climate change, so they pooled together their own knowledge and resources to start community climate schools in their communities.
- In 2023, our Nigeria members decided that election violence affects each one of them. So they pooled their own resources and launched a campaign that reached 10 million people.
- In Malawi, to address the misinformation and vaccine hesitancy during COVID-19, members started a radio show using their own connections and resources.
This courage, this innovation, this never-say-die spirit, this resilience, and this determination that we will not give up our fight for the values that we believe in and for the world that we want to see gives me hope. There is also so much power waiting to be unleashed amongst the youth. I see that energy in our Youth Task Force, in the manifesto that the members have created for themselves, in the kind of initiatives they are bringing out.
Finally, we are seeing a recognition of the importance of people and communities. Until the beginning of 2025, everyone would talk of locally-led organizations, but I would often be the first person to bring the word community into the conversation. In the last year, I seldom had to do so. There is finally an intention to begin to center communities, to recognize their power, their collective strength, and their centrality in any change that we want to see. That gives me hope.
What has surprised you most in your journey with MCLD and community‑led development?
My personal journey with MCLD and our members has helped me to identify and address my own blind spots. We talk about the power of collective action as the underlying principle of MCLD, but seeing that principle at work, seeing how the dimensions of CLD play out in practice, was a transformative experience.
I joined MCLD to research the impact of CLD and quickly realized that I did not have the skills or knowledge to be doing that research. We had a huge resource, though: we had hundreds and thousands of organizations and individuals within our membership that see this impact every day and understand why CLD is important. Instead of trying to do it myself, I pulled together a collaborative research team. I simply asked people for help, and one of the things I learned in the process was the power of collective action.
When these individuals came together to create MCLD’s tools and frameworks, they didn’t do it because it was part of their job description, but because of their commitment. In the process, we created bonds of trust that in many ways mirror how change happens at the community level in community-led development. To actually see those principles at work in my everyday work life was very different. It also made me realize how much we take for granted and how much we expect from people who are the most marginalized in the community. It was eye-opening to consider the similarity and begin to think about how to create CLD models that don’t add pressure to historically marginalized groups, but instead enable them to step into that agency. How do we make CLD into a structure of support, not a structure of demand?
What have been some of your biggest lessons from your time with MCLD?
When we started the conversations about locally-led development and shifting power, I assumed that due to the history of exploitation, gatekeeping, and starvation of funds and visibility, local organizations would really want INGOs to go away. It was a learning experience for me to witness that local organizations and CBOs, in most cases, did not want INGOs to vanish. All they wanted was to be recognized as equals. For their work to be visible. They wanted the risks they took to be recognized and shared. They wanted respect. The change they wanted was a more equitable space for all of us to do what we can together. This early lesson made me realize that our framing and understanding of this sector are often in terms of competitiveness when it should be about collaboration and connection. I also recognised that local organizations or CBOs is a very broad term and somehow paints everyone with the same brush. Not all local and community-based organizations want the same thing. Context matters.
My second lesson is around inclusion. I entered the sector as a feminist activist in India, and since then, the one thing that seems to be common across the board is a commitment to inclusion, or at least a stated intention to be inclusive. Yet, inclusion is one of the most difficult things to carry out. One of my biggest lessons was that inclusion is not a destination; it’s a continuous journey that requires intentionality at every step. To be continuously aware and vigilant and to strive for inclusion is extremely difficult. For example, every language requires translation support, which requires funding and human resources. Inclusion also challenges a lot of our existing assumptions about ourselves, our ways of working, and our beliefs. We all believe we are inclusive, but we don’t see the many groups of people we exclude or the many ways in which our practices are exclusionary.
My third biggest learning has been just the sheer resilience of human beings. I have seen this throughout my life, but I think we often forget or get desensitized to it. At MCLD, I get spoonfuls of inspiration from this resilience daily and have started to identify its ingredients. Agency, relationships, the power of human connection, hope, to name a few. One of my big learnings has been how important relationships are for resilience, and I see it so often at MCLD when our members use whatever they have to support each other.
As Global Secretary, what is your vision for MCLD’s future?
For me, MCLD has always been a safe space for collective action. It is a place where different organizations and individuals who are committed to the values of gender equity, peace, justice, non-violence, ecological solidarity, and interconnection come together to brainstorm, to discuss, to debate, to identify ideas, to figure out next steps, and to envision a different kind of world.
It is in the diversity of knowledge, ideas, opinions, experience, and perspectives that something new emerges. Latino thought talks about a pluriverse, a world in which many worlds coexist. They don’t compete with each other for existence, but instead power each other.
It is, however, not easy in the current environment. My vision is an MCLD that continues to model solidarity, collective action, and a different way of being. I hope that over the next 10 years, MCLD emerges as an alternative to the current survival of the fittest mentality. My favorite analogy for MCLD is that we are like the human body – each organ, whether it’s the heart, the kidneys, the liver, the brain, each does what it is best suited to do so that collectively, we have a very healthy body. Where every member, every organization feels MCLD is theirs. Imagine if we could be the same way about our planet!