Publications, tools, and resources from 10 years of collective knowledge are featured all across MCLD’s website. As we begin to celebrate our 10 year anniversary, we have compiled 10 of our most popular resources:
A Volume of Diverse Case Studies and Critical Reflection
Purpose: Published in 2024 by 15+ authors from around the world. This volume includes case studies of community-led practices from various contexts and geographies, as well as explores the nine dimensions of CLD.
The Participatory CLD Assessment Tool
Purpose: Create dialogue among stakeholders through participatory reviews at various junctures of the program life-cycle to determine how the program aligns with the CLD characteristics, and enable reviewers and stakeholders to undertake course corrections, where agreed and needed.
The Community-led World View of Systems Change
Purpose: This framework, introduced by MCLD staff, begins with intangibles that can lead to tangible change. It is based on MCLD’s vision of alternatives to neo-colonial habits and structures by co-creating new ways to come together as we move away from top-down, expert-driven development.
The Quality Appraisal Tool for Evaluating CLD
Purpose: To support Monitoring, Evaluation, Learning, and Program staff from NGOs and CSOs to ensure that evaluations are rigorous and congruent with the principles of Community-Led Development. The tool can be used to evaluate the quality of a program evaluation, assessment, or research study.
A Guidance Document for Organizing Events Inclusively
Purpose: A guidance document from local actors on designing inclusive events, with local actors, by local actors, and for local actors. This document includes guidance for all stages of events, from planning to follow-up.
The Story of MCLD’s Transformation
Purpose: This article offers a framework on how to transform from a Movement into a Movement Organization, remaining true to its identity and moral imperatives while being practical, sustaining action over time, and catering to different members and where they are in the journey.
A Landscape Review of CLD
Purpose: This collaborative study of 173 programs in 65 countries is, to the best of our knowledge, the first attempt at creating a landscape
of current CLD practice. We seek to understand the current nature of CLD programming and build a common language to talk about it.
A Journal Article Exploring Lived Experience of Community-led MEL
Purpose: This article explores what ColMEL looks like in practice and distills the lessons from community practitioners to establish factors that facilitate ColMEL, while proposing a new collaboration paradigm to operationalize it.
A New Way of Looking at MEL
Purpose: An article offering a reimagined role of academic journals in the process of decolonizing, from being an instrument of knowledge transfer and career progression to becoming a site for action and change. In this case, we look at decolonizing evaluation practices.
Exploring the Relationships that Make CLD Work
Purpose: This article advocates for a fundamental shift in international development toward authentic CLD that centers local voices, relationships, and intangible factors, such as trust, dignity, and ownership, as key drivers of meaningful and sustainable change.