In this year of Beijing+25 the session theme is Harnessing the power of Gender Equality featuring Geeta Rao Gupta (UNF and 3D), Hemlata Verma (ICRW) and Mary Kate Costello (THP). The full program with speaker bios and their slide decks are below.
Grace Boone of CDA Collaborative and David Yamron of Search for Common Ground were the special guests at our meeting today, briefing us on a project central to Community-led Development – “Stopping As Success: Transitioning to Locally Led Development.” The project website here has just gone live, and will feature 20 case studies and tools.
Our Overarching goal for 2019 has been to shift the movement into “Phase Two”: to move beyond enlisting and organizing member organizations into taking collective, strategic action towards facilitating community-led development at scale. This goal has been achieved!
By Father Edwin M. John – a submission to the UN Commission on the Status of Women
A massive experiment in the State of Kerala, India, points the way to a new political order in terms of global governance from below, to ensure empowerment of women, in a wide-reaching and sustainable manner.
The experiment, Kudumbashree, has nearly 300,000 neighbourhood groups of women in poverty-risk, reaching nearly half the families of the State. The groups are federated at three levels of local governance. These groups of women-in-poverty-risk, put together, have a financial outlay bigger than that of any corporate house in the State. And due to such groups, in a State where women were not encouraged to socialize much outside their homes, more women got elected to the local governance body than men, in the last two successive elections.
The experiment that began with neighbourhood groups of Poor women, opened the way gradually to a new system of citizens’ participation as promulgated through Kerala Institute of Local Administration (KILA), integrating not just the women and the poor, but every citizen. All citizens can inclusively participate through small-sized neighbourhood assemblies (neighbourhood sabhas) at the base, which link to ward sabhas at the second level, and to Panchayat council at the top.
The fact that this could be done in Kerala, which though a State is bigger in population than 41 countries, gives us reason to think of the possibility of its wider or even global adaptation.
The factor that makes Kerala’s programme distinct is neighborhoodization, supported by factors like smallification, multi-tier federation and convergence.
Unlike self-help groups elsewhere, in Kerala the groups are neighbourhood-based. Territorially organized, they could get everyone inclusively involved. This geographical territory-based approach meant also that the poor women could easily interface with local governance structures which too are territorially organized. Thus at every level of local governance women had an organized voice, a mechanism, to interact. ( Especially In developing countries, being neighbourhood-based gives added accessibility and advantage to women, as here women stay around in neighbourhoods more than men.)
The insistence is also on the participating forums being small. The bigger a forum, the more the small voices get drowned and they go powerless and helpless.
We need a new political – and economic and social – order that builds on such factors. http://www.childrenparliament.in/Documents/bravenewworld.pdf
One such dream is represented by neighborocracy which is explained as neighbourhood-based sociocracy.
Neighborocracy envisions a world organized as neighbourhood parliaments of about thirty families each. These serve as neighbourhood governments with ministers to respond to the concerns of the neighbourhood and to respond on behalf of the neighbourhood to the concerns of the wider world. These Neighbourhood Parliaments are federated at various governance levels like that of area/ward, local governance, sub-district, district, state, nation, international region, and the world, with ministers at each level. The elections are to be just from one level to the next. The whole process is to be guided by principles of Smallness, Numerical Uniformity, Subsidiarity, Recallability, Convergence, Consent-based Decision-making and Sociocratic Elections.
Principle of Smallness is to insist that the forums that start from the neighbourhood level and go upto national, international and global levels be so small that everyone could sit around and talk without a microphone.
Principle of Numerical Uniformity follows from the first. If the forums elected are to be small at every level, they can contain only a certain number of representatives from units immediately below. This will lead to a situation where there are no bigger and smaller countries and hence no border wars and hence no war at all.
Principle of Subsidiarity insists that whatever could be decided upon at any subsidiary or low or decentralized level should be decided upon at that level, leading to a situation where most of the decisions are taken at the base level.
Principle of Recallability, whereby people at any level can call back representatives elected to the level immediately above, becomes easy because, at every level, forums are small in size. This ensures that people hold power not just during the once-in-five year elections but on a day-to-day basis.
The successive governments of Kerala did a great job delegating to the neighbourhood-group-federations whatever could be routed through them. This gave them more and more reasons to come together and do things together. And the more the forums came together, the stronger and the more cohesive they became. And this approach is represented by the Principle of Convergence: let every activity, role and power converge as much as possible at neighbourhood forums and their federations.
When the decisions are majority-based as in democracy, people get divided. And there is a compulsion for the majority to project the minority or “opposition” in a bad light. In addition, due to the hugeness of election constituencies, democracy often ends up as the rule of the rich, by the rich and for the rich. Against this, from Netherlands emerged Sociocracy with its insistence on small circles, double-linking, decision by consent (not consensus), and sociocratic elections. Every decision-making based on consent and every sociocratic election tends to leave groups more united and cohesive and glued.
Fortunately, the small-neighbourhood-based approach gains more and more acceptance. States and countries send delegates to Kerala to learn from the experience, and the Kerala government has opened a special training center for such needs.
Again a network of Inclusive Neighbourhood Children’s Parliaments, that is becoming increasingly global follows the above principles. They are being organized in schools and in residential neighbourhoods. Even when in schools, the units are not on the basis of the classes or grades the children study, but inclusively on the basis of the residential neighbourhoods they come from. Every child here becomes a minister. 17 such ministers in each unit of 30 children are for the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the UN. There are schools with as many as forty units functioning in the same campus, meeting one hour every week meeting alternatively as territory-based neighbourhood parliament sessions and as theme-based meetings of the various ministries. The children get initiated this way for proactive global citizenship.www.childrenparliament.in;
All such initiatives give the hope that a new world of governance-from-below will not be very far in blossoming.
So our call to countries and women everywhere: start organizing your own neighbourhood as small-sized territory-based units. We will very soon have a world of women-led empowerment, justice and equality.
Author: Jenny Hodgson, Originally published at www.bond.org.uk, 11 March 2019. Featured photo by Anna Dubuis/DFID – CC BY-NC 2.0.
Our world is changing from the ground up. Whether a community-owned pub in the UK, participatory budget-making in Spain, a community endowment fund in Zimbabwe, or a post-earthquake bare-foot volunteer program in Nepal, local communities are finding new ways of deciding things and doing things for themselves. And they are organizing themselves and the resources they have to do so.
Within the INGO sector, the recent conversations about localisation, resourcing and the future of civil society offer the perfect opportunity for some radical and bold thinking. As a new social renaissance emerges, there are valuable experiences and lessons to draw in from the global south.
There is a growing recognition that our collective “ubuntu” – the ties that bind us together as humans – is broken. Digital technologies and social media mean that we are more connected than ever, and yet distrust, isolation and fragmentation characterise our social condition. Increasingly, this global phenomenon has translated into political spaces, as we’ve seen with Brexit, Trump’s election and the rise of right-wing populist parties across Europe.
Societal divides are no longer as simple as north-south or “developed”-“developing”: inequalities within countries are as great as they are between them. Initiatives that set out to organise, mobilise and engage people where they are, to re-connect neighbours with each other and reignite a sense of shared purpose and possibility are crucial to countering these negative forces.
The world needs community weavers and bridge-builders, people and institutions who can instil hope and build power at the margins of our societies, in villages, towns, cities around the world. This new social renaissance is characterised by distributed, citizen-led networks and “relationalism” rather individualism.
Over the last twenty years, a quiet revolution has been taking place in communities around the world, often despite rather than because of the big machinery of international development aid. Community philanthropy has emerged as a way of organising, as a development strategy and as a set of institutions in countries as diverse as Brazil, Kenya, Russia and Vietnam.
These initiatives have been shaped by local context and culture, and have been led by individuals concerned about disenchantment and disengagement at the community level, frustrated by the failures of traditional development aid. They are inspired by the belief that without local resources, local leadership and local buy-in, development projects will continue to land like fireworks – to flash spectacularly and then die.
Although many of these local funds and foundations – such as the Kenya Community Development Foundation, Tewa – the Nepal Women’s Fund and the Zambia Governance Foundation – were established as one-offs, there is now clear evidence of a distinct community philanthropy “field”.
Take the question of money. Although external resources may make up part of their funding structure, these community philanthropy organisations seek to build local cultures of philanthropy – especially among ordinary people – as a good in itself. In other words, people become active citizens who are part of the solution, fostering collective action and flattening power dynamics between who gives and who receives.
Acknowledging, respecting, valuing and pooling local resources is a direct rebuke of the “beneficiary” mindset that the international development community has helped create.
In the last few years, this scattered and often invisible field (invisible at least in the eyes of the mainstream development sector) has started to organise itself globally, to express its collective voice as an effective alternative to a development system that has been preoccupied by scale and dominated by big institutions.
It has also become a driving force behind the #ShiftThePower movement. Participatory grantmaking, giving circles, community or affiliate funds have emerged as strategies that seek to share and shift power away from the hands of big institutional gatekeepers – regardless of whether they are in the north or south.
Pieces of the solution are already out there for those would care to look, both in terms of practice and theory. If we want to realise the vision of a flatter, networked world driven from the ground up (rather than the funding down), we will all need to join forces, in solidarity, and in the case of big institutions, that may require some fundamental re-writing of roles.
Global Fund for Community Foundations
Jenny has been the executive director of the Global Fund for Community Foundations since 2006.
At the May 2019 Global Call of the Movement for Community-led Development, we had two excellent presentations:
Claudia Liebler, co-founder of Root Change, presented their “Social Labs” approach pioneered in two districts of Malawi.
Rowlands Kaotcha, Southern Africa regional coordinator for The Hunger Project based in Malawi, presented the Epicenter Strategy, now active in 127 clusters of villages in nine countries of West, East and Southern Africa.
You can also click here to watch the entire 90-minute call and discussion.
Every year, thousands of women’s rights activists from around the world converge on UN Headquarters in New York to push world leaders ever closer – inch by inch – to realizing the vision of women’s full and equal participation. This year’s 63rd session on the Commission on the Status of Women paid special attention to Social Protection.
Social Protection is one of those extremely important issues to women leaders that The Hunger Project has supported in villages around the world. It is defined as “set of policies and programs designed to reduce poverty and vulnerability by promoting efficient labor markets, diminishing people’s exposure to risks, and enhancing their capacity to protect themselves against hazards and interruption/loss of income. Social protection consists of five major elements: (i) labor markets, (ii) social insurance, (iii) social assistance, (iv) micro and area-based schemes to protect communities and (v) child protection.”
Grassroots women leaders are passionate defenders of the most marginalized members of their already marginalized communities: Widows who have been denied pensions because of corrupt beneficiary lists. Women who are harassed with impunity on farms, on the streets, in garment factories and in their homes. Girls kept out of school and forced into child labor. Take the most horrifying of the #MeToo stories you’ve heard and multiply by the hundreds of millions of girls and women exploited with little or no chance of gaining justice never mind protection.
The Hunger Project and the Movement for Community-led Development helped organize two events that emphasized the critical role of women’s leadership in community-led strategies to halt exploitation and ensure social protection in settled communities (on March 15 – link) as well as in the growing migrant populations across our world (March 12 – link).
Perhaps the most moving moment of these events was when Maurice Bloem quoted from the poem “Home” by Warsan Shire. You can hear the poet herself read it below. It is highly relevant to the painful period our world is going through today.
Concurrent to our events, in the main governmental negotiations of the Commission, world leaders agreed to a 51-point set of conclusions that reaffirm “reaffirms that the promotion and protection of, and respect for, the human rights and fundamental freedoms of all women and girls, including the right to development, which are universal, indivisible, interdependent and interrelated, are crucial for the full and equal participation of women and girls.” The Hunger Project has long recognized that integrated approaches are critical to address the multiple burdens on women, and the Commission conclusions call for integrated approaches no less than five times.
Design is more important than affordability. Regarding? Well, arguably anything. But let’s consider social protection.
Let’s first about the fact that approximately 55% of the world’s population does not have full social protection (that’s about 4 billion people). Let’s also think about the reality that in developing contexts or developing countries, the percentage of national budgets allocated to local services is an average of 2% (versus an average of 50% in developing contexts or countries).
For a world where all persons have social protection, the cost exceeds affordability and design is key.
This was the theme of the recently completed 57th Commission on Social Development (CSocD): addressing inequalities and challenges to social inclusion through fiscal, wage and social protection policies. It provided important, complex dialogue between Member States, civil society and UN agencies with less than 11 years left to achieve the sustainable development goals (SDGs).
It was a Commission that automatically focused on integrated development approaches, policies and the scalable value of community led programming. From the perspective of the Movement for Community-led Development, this was a Commission that highlighted how the local level and community-led designs can fill the resourcing gap to fund much needed social protection.
During CSocD, the Movement dedicated time to this discussion in an event titled “Building Effective Social Accountability Mechanisms at the Local Level to Ensure Social Protection.” Featuring development experts from Church World Service, América Solidaria, and The Hunger Project, the session challenged attendees to explore what social protection needs to look like at the local level and how local persons can mobilize.
Mary Kate Costello of The Hunger Project stated that “social protection at the local level is a conversation of society’s responsibility, will and capacity – as much as it is that of the government and social security payment schemes within the formal work sector.” Regardless of local government services, there is a need for communities and community processes to be 1) inclusive, and; 2) transparent.
Using an example from The Hunger Project’s programming in India, Mary Kate discussed how community groups responsible for social security beneficiary lists reformed their processes to cross-check that persons deceased or no longer needing support were removed and replaced with “low caste” peoples. In Rajasthan, alongside the National Rural Employment Scheme, these beneficiary lists and criteria to qualify are literally painted on the side of the panchayat office for everyone to see.
Knowing your rights. This is a critical component to reach full coverage of social protection. How else can people hold their governments and communities accountable for their commitments and responsibilities? Beyond placing criteria for all to see and/or read [to one another], it duly prudent for civil society to conduct workshops on political rights. This is what América Solidaria carries out in Chile. They hold “know-your-rights training workshops” and also one-on-one legal consultations for employability. Through strong, dependable and fruitful employment, people can pursue their own social protection – regardless of government coverage for social protection.
Assessing what a community and its citizens already have is a crucial step in assessing gaps in social protection, a method that Church World Service (CWS) applies to its global programming. This needs-based assessments at the outset of programming has proven especially useful in cases of migrant assistance. CWS is able to not only determine what needs remain, but also what skills and drivers are present among migrant populations. This can help inform what leadership roles migrants can take in their new settlements, as well as build safe space for their voice and agency.
Andrew Fuys, Senior Director of Global Migration for CWS, discussed the important role of faith leaders in building persons’ voice to ensure their social protection. Faith leaders are often key leaders in local communities, and migrant persons in developing contexts – never mind most people in developing contexts – are persons of faith. In helping to establish “voice allies” between faith leaders and migrant persons, CWS can help to identify joint action toward inclusive social protection.
Fostering voice allies. Building rights awareness. Ensuring transparency of processes. These are key elements of mobilizing social accountability mechanisms for inclusive social protection. This design prevails affordability, especially at the local level.
This was the first Learning Session organized by the newly-formed CLD Learning Working Group, which evolved from the Locus Learning Working Group. Co-chairs: Matt Lineal (Nuru International) and Sia Nowrojee (3D Program for Girls and Women)
Brian Viani, Leadership & Training Strategic Advisor, Nuru International, From ‘Capacity Building’ to ‘Capacity Development’: Definitions and Approaches (slide deck below for download)
Smriti Lakhey, Chief Operating Officer, Root Change, ‘Self-Facilitated’ Capacity Development
Nurhan Kocaoglu, Senior Program Officer, Counterpart International, Recipient or Partner?