Useful Websites
In addition to the excellent websites of our members, here are additional collective efforts relevant to advancing community-led development.
- Academy for Systems Change – a global community of individuals and organizations for transforming social systems.
- Community-Driven Development – World Bank.
- Decentralization.net – the online platform of the Local Public Sector Alliance
- DeLog: Decentralisation & Local Governance
- Global Fund for Community Foundations – #ShiftThePower
- Global Task Force of Local and Regional Governments
- ICLD: International Center for Local Democracy
- International Observatory on Participatory Democracy
- Lex Localis – Journal of Local Self Government
- Local2030.org – a strategic, multi-partner Hub to catalyze solutions for implementation of the SDGs at the local level hosted by the UN.
- Local Economic Development Forum – Coming up in October. UNDP
- MESH: a collaborative open-access web space for people involved in community engagement with health research in low and middle income countries (LMICs).
- Near – CSOs in global South to ensure genuine local participation at all levels of development and disaster management.
- One by One: Target 2030 is a multi-level advocacy campaign led by The Access Challenge and H.E. Former President Jakaya M. Kikwete, in support of WHO’s UHC agenda.
- Participatory Local Democracy with State of Participatory Democracy Reports, by The Hunger Project
- People First Community – a cross-sectoral and globally diverse group of practitioners, academics, and public and private sector actors with a shared belief in the importance of prioritizing investing in collective leadership development as a path for sustainable development.
- Praia Group on Governance Statistics
- SDG16 Data Initiative
- ShiftThePower
- UCLG: United Cities and Local Governments – The Global Network of Cities, Local and Regional Governments
- V-Dem – the Varieties of Democracy Institute at the Universities of Gothenburg, Sweden, and Notre Dame, USA. “a multidimensional and disaggregated dataset that reflects the complexity of the concept of democracy as a system of rule that goes beyond the simple presence of elections.”
Other Resources
Items we cite!
- New Horizons for Community-led Development, Recommendations For Funders, Jenny Hodgson, Barry Knight and Susan Wilkinson-Maposa, Commissioned by Comic Relief. March 2019
- Community-Driven Development, Myths and Realities, Susan Wong, Scott Guggenheim, World Bank, May 2018
- John Coonrod, “Participatory Local Democracy: Key to Community-Led Rural Development”, Development (2016). doi:10.1057/s41301-016-0008-2
- State of Participatory Democracy Report, a multidimensional index across 50+ countries, The Hunger Project, 2013 and 2014.
- Community-led Development, Sherri Torjman and Anne Makhoul, January 2012, Caledon Institute of Social Policy.
- Learning By Doing by Inspiring Communities in New Zealand presents comprehensive thinking, learning, examples and results from community-led activities. It’s become a ‘must have’ handbook for people and organisations wanting to empower and support locally-led change.
- People’s Self-Development,Md. Anisur Rahman, March 1989.
Arnstein Ladder
- What Happened to Integrated Rural Development?, by Susan Chase and Elisa Wilkinson.
- Some Characteristics of World Bank Experience with Community-Driven Development (CDD), By Susan Chase
- From Social Engineering to Community Transformation: Amul, Grammen Bank and Mondragon as Exemplar Organizations, Bhawuk, Mrazek and Munusamy, University of Hawaii, 2009.
- A Ladder of Citizen Participation, Journal of the American Planning Association, by Sherry R. Arnstein, 1969. 35:4, 216-224. This is one of the earliest, most tough-minded and most cited papers on the subject.
Books… and why you should read them
- Tell the People: Conversations with James Yen, Pearl Buck, 1945. Y.C. James Yen was founder of China’s Rural Reconstruction Movement in the 1920s and later founded IIRR in the Philippines. For two days at her farm in Pennsylvania, the Nobel Prize winning novelist pulled from Yen a comprehensive picture of his methodology. (Out of print, contact John Coonrod about ebooks).
- Pedagogy of the Oppressed, (Free online access) Paolo Freire, 1973. THE foundational source book on the profound psycho-social transformation required for people to become authors of their own development. Free online Spanish Edition, Free, condensed French Edition.
- Rural Development: Putting the last first, Robert Chambers, 1983.
- Whose Reality Counts? Putting the First Last, Robert Chambers, 1997
Relevant Speeches
- Address by Judith Karl, Executive Secretary, UN Capital Development Fund, at the event “No Transformation Without Localization”
- Address by Pope Francis to the UN General Assembly September 2015. “To enable these real men and women to escape from extreme poverty, we must allow them to be dignified agents of their own destiny. Integral human development and the full exercise of human dignity cannot be imposed. They must be built up and allowed to unfold”