Nurturing African Leadership
Africa is very rich in natural resources and has the youngest population of any continent. If we can make the most of this abundance, we can create shared prosperity on…
A People-First Approach to Locally Led, Globally Informed Development
Introduction
For decades, the international development community has grappled with how to enable local ownership for development, which is essential to foster sustainable, systemic change. We are a community that has come together because we believe that achieving locally led development will require developing ourselves–building consciousness of our own biases and privilege and how these have informed our ideas about where leadership needs to come from–and growing and improving initiatives that cultivate the agency and leadership of people in developing contexts.
The approach we are suggesting would enable a fundamental shift in international development–from a focus on identifying proven interventions and scaling them across developing contexts in pursuit of measurable outcomes at significant scale, towards one that invests in the people in developing contexts and supports them to achieve meaningful outcomes over time.
Who we are
We are a community of practitioners, academics, and public and private sector actors who believe in the people in developing contexts to drive their own progress, and have seen through our own experiences that investing in them must be our first focus as a development community. We are committed to living into the principles of a “people-first” approach to development in our own work and to advocating for the broader transformation of international development towards this approach.
What We’re Reading
Trusting Community-based Learning Ecosystems
European School of Governance, position paper #25 by Louis Klein | Community-based learning ecosystems lie at the very heart of our understanding of the world, of its being and of…
How Covid could be the ‘long overdue’ shake-up needed by the aid sector
This year one in every 33 people across the world will need humanitarian assistance. That is a rise of 40% from last year, according to the UN. More than half of the…
Why it’s time for international development to put people first
The international development community needs to shift its approach from intervening to solve problems to developing local leadership; People in developing contexts should be encouraged and given the skills to…
For the global development community, 7 predictions for 2021
This past year has been a lesson in the challenges of predicting. For the global development community, the best laid plans of the so-called “Decade of Action” had to be shelved…
Systems Don’t Have Agency: Putting People First in 2021
By all accounts, 2020 was a watershed year for the term “systemic inequity.” It burst onto the scene amidst pandemic and protest, showing up in public conversations across a range…
What might you do?
We invite you to join the conversation! Please share your ideas, give feedback on our evolving effort, and contribute to our expanded understanding and adoption of a “people-first” approach to development. For more information please contact people@peoplefirstdev.org