Our vision
For every community in the world to have the resources, skills, knowledge autonomy and equitable partnerships to achieve their own goals and visions.
Our Mission
To Shift The Power so that low-income communities successfully achieve their own visions and goals.
Goals
MCLD is committed to gender-focused Community-led Development. We bring together civil society and governments into an effective partnership to achieve the following goals:
Voice and Agency for Women, Youth, People with Disabilities, and All Marginalized Groups: all citizens, particularly the marginalized, need effective community-based civil society organizations and the opportunity to participate in local decision-making.
Adequate Community Finance: policies that ensure all communities can command a fair share of public resources to achieve local goals in ways that are transparent, timely, and publicly accountable.
Good Local Governance: local governments must be democratically elected and financially autonomous. They need to partner with citizens through mandatory mechanisms for planning and social accountability.
Quality Public Services: every community must have access to affordable, effective, quality public services for health, education, water, sanitation, vocational training, food and nutrition security, natural resource management, public safety, and justice.
Resilience: all communities must establish regularized processes for disaster preparedness and risk-reduction, developing the skills and awareness to be resilient to climate change and social/political disruptions.
Values
Governance
We are a Majority World led “network of networks” where members in each country set their priorities in a National Association structured and registered (where needed), consistent with the laws and standards in each country, yet aligned around a global mission and set of values. National Association decisions are made through an Annual General Meeting of members and by an elected Board or steering committee, no more than 50% of whom can be male.
MCLD’s new structure emerged out of a year-long process of listening and consultations with our members. The document below lays out our structure and details the roles and responsibilities of all our constituents.
Click for more information
The Global Assembly provides strategic direction and policy development for MCLD, respecting the principle of subsidiarity, and oversees the use of the MCLD brand. It serves as the apex policy-making body for policies that affect all MCLD NAs. Read more about the Global Assembly’s purpose and structure here.
In instances where global decisions are required, these are made democratically by the Global Assembly that includes a gender-balanced pair of representatives from each National Association. Our Secretariat has members seconded from various National Associations.
National Associations are self-governed groups driving collective action and learning, made up of:
- 10+ members – at least 50% local organizations
- Steering Committee/Board – providing policy and strategic direction
- National Coordinator – mobilizing action and operations
Theory of Change
Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals requires a systems change to shift power and resources to accountable, responsive, effective local institutions.
Our Theory of Change includes two types of partnerships for collective impact within each country:
- Advocacy Partnerships where civil society can engage national governments to decentralize administration and devolve a fair share of public resources to the community level.
- Facilitation Partnerships that demonstrate the processes by which citizens can achieve healthy, productive, resilient, self-reliant communities.
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