[Teresa Crawford]

Interesting post on Medium by Ann Hendrix-Jenkins – Values – not funding – should be driving the localisation discourse in international development.

Calls for new ways to reduce global poverty and hunger are being driven by today’s socio-political climate and a weak track record of producing sustainable change. Thus the ideas of “localization” and “#shiftthepower” are getting a lot of well-deserved attention. Unfortunately they run the danger of being reduced to a single metric: funding shifted from international to “local” organizations. (Note that “local” in this use unhelpfully conflates all domestic civil society organizations in low- and middle-income countries, from the national level institutions to the rural village women’s group.) For those international NGOs (INGOs) that measure their self-worth by annual budget, number of employees, and business “win rates,” this had led to registering country offices as “local” so they can continue to access the #shifting funding.

• Ann is a consultant currently working with Tostan on learning community development. You can find more of her posts here.

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