Family for Every Child is an international alliance led by and for frontline civil society organisations (CSOs) that support children and families – working together to share best practice and amplify our knowledge on the global stage to achieve wider change.
But just 15 years ago, we were a very different organisation: one wrestling with the fact that international development had chronic white saviour issues and that our solutions were heavily influenced by Western experience; that as a London-headquartered INGO, power sat firmly with us rather than local communities around the world.
We felt we were part of the problem, not the solution. We risked being merely an expensive conduit between donors and change on the ground. At the time, we were known as EveryChild.
This recognition led us to facilitate a group of local practitioner organisations, to create an organisation that could help to dismantle the power imbalances within the sector and cascade their local knowledge to improve policy and practice nationally and internationally.
To cut a long story short, we decided the best outcome was for EveryChild to be disbanded. It closed its global office, put an end to its existing programmes and ceased to recruit new supporters. Furthermore, it transferred all of its assets and resources and placed its fundraising capability in the hands of local organisations to support the work of the new network, Family for Every Child.
Now, with international development in free fall, we believe more strongly than ever that genuine localisation is the most powerful way to achieve social justice.
Shifting to a knowledge mobilisation rather than funding distribution-based theory of change is now imperative, in other words, giving full recognition to the expertise of local organisations, and upholding the legitimacy of communities to be their own leaders of change.
We believe anything less will fail to bring about the paradigm shift needed.
Transformation not tinkering
There needs to be a seismic shift to a landscape where international agencies no longer hold power over local CSOs and communities.
Instead of perpetuating a situation where outsider organisations influence governments around the world on policy and practice, the focus needs to be on enabling local communities to be in the driving seat and able to hold their own governments to account.
This is a political rather than technical approach. It requires a new infrastructure based on “democratic” principles, bringing local communities and CSOs together to set the agenda for change – a collective leadership, which places those most impacted by injustice and inequity at the centre of decision-making.
Local not global power
Despite many years of localisation and decolonisation initiatives, power is still very much concentrated in the hands of international agencies and Western donors.
Recent “progress” has been dominated by international organisations hosting discussions and working up initiatives largely with each other, with only the occasional “local darling” CSO invited to the table. As a result, the agenda setting, scope and pace of changes are all still largely being set by INGOs on behalf of, rather than with, local organisations.
The latest fall out from USAID cuts is leading many large international organisations to look inwards and redesign themselves. This is an incredible opportunity for positive change, but one that must not be allowed to play out within an INGO echo chamber.
Local organisations must be integral to the redesign process, articulating a new blueprint for how they can access funds and technical know-how and influence national and international decision-makers. There are serious questions to be asked around what role, if any, there is for international agencies, local organisations and communities should be part of reaching the answers.
Knowledge not funding architecture
Increasingly, funding has defined the international development and humanitarian architecture.
One of the approaches of INGOs over the last few years has been to register as local entities. In part, this was about localisation, but it was often also about accessing national funds.
An unintended consequence is that these entities became competitors with locally grown CSOs, diverting local funds, inflating the salary market and taking talent away from the true local organisations.
The current scramble for new funds risks further harmful practice where organisational survival drives function and form.
Instead, now is the opportunity to focus on how we capture and disseminate knowledge about the problems and the solutions for social justice, recognising that this understanding is located in the communities themselves. The flow of knowledge rather than funds should define the new architecture.
Investment not retrenchment
In the name of localisation or decolonisation, many INGOs moved their head offices out of the US and Europe to places such as Nairobi. Now the cutbacks are leading to a mass evacuation, with serious detriment to those local economies.
Decisions about priorities and funding flows risk being taken on the basis of organisational survival. The rush for cost savings can’t be at the cost of long-term change. Rather than leaving, now is the time to invest in local entities already deeply embedded in the local context.
Collaborative discussions with local CSOs can help to define what value add international organisation can bring, and how that could be structured. Rather than retrenchment, we need creative investment.
Role of donors
International organisations have long held the crucial relationships with donors and are infinitely better placed to succeed with winning new funds.
The increased desire of donors to fund locally has had little impact. There has become a well-trodden path where international organisations simply add local organisations to their proposals as project partners, still holding onto the lion’s share of the funding, whilst dictating delivery terms.
Now that funds are even more competitive, there is a real risk of international organisations tightening their grip even further on the few that are still available. Without local organisations, embedded in their communities, there can be no progress, and yet now, more than ever, they seem to be left at the end of the food chain, with many at risk of closure.
The whole system has always been predicated on change happening at a local community level and now we have the opportunity to create a system that places decision-making power and resources at that local level.
Redefining capacity
Both donors and international organisations designed into their funding a capacity building requirement. This often meant moulding CSOs in a certain image of what a “strong” organisation looks like. It meant local CSOs moved away from accountability to their communities, to a focus on accountability to the funders.
Now is the opportunity to radically rethink accountability, the relationship between donors and local organisations and to look at what, if any, role can be played by international organisations.
This starts with recognising that local experience, knowledge and understanding are the fundamental capacity needed to effect change. The system needs to be built around capturing and disseminating that knowledge to influence policy and practice nationally and internationally.
We face a choice: we can either scramble around to hold on to whatever is left of the old international development sector, or we can leap forward into a new way of achieving social justice. At the risk of voicing a hackneyed cliché, the current collapse of the system is an opportunity.
This is the time for total reinvention, not surface-level reform, that needs the whole community of actors to come together in new ways and to place power in the hands of local communities to achieve change.
It means some of us, like my old organisation EveryChild, need to decide to step out and place resources and decision-making with local organisations, recognising the central value of local knowledge and working to promote democratic principles and accountability. Now is the time for actions that fundamentally shift the power.
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