A Skoll World Forum EcoSystem Event - Shifting the Power: Community-Led Development for a Partnership-Based Society
On April 8th, OneVillage Partners with the Movement for Community-Led Development co-hosted a Skoll World Forum EcoSystem Event featuring speakers and community-led development champions from all over the world, ranging from community leaders in Ghana to USAID-Paraguay. Watch the full recording below!
“Localize” and “capacity building” are buzzwords in international development, but for those in community-led development (CLD), these concepts aren’t new. Local communities have resources and capacity to drive development, but due to colonialism and modern capitalism, decision-making often lies elsewhere. What does it take to shift power to create a partnership-based society? It takes each one of us.
Co-hosted by OneVillage Partners and the Movement for Community-Led Development, a global consortium of 1500+ CSOs and 70+ INGOs, the session featured stories from the global development community addressing what it means to shift power to local communities. The audience used virtual storyboards to share what shifting the power means to them and discussed an array of dilemmas in CLD and proposed solutions. The session aimed to shift power from the traditional binary of “experts” imposing knowledge on the “non-experts” to a format that encompasses the participatory nature of community-led development.
Participants in this EcoSystem event heard from and interacted with people representing all facets of the international development landscape:
Adriana Casati, USAID/Paraguay, Program, Resources and Performance Director
Dr. Rebecca S Dali, PhD, Strategic Action for Community Development, Nigeria (SACDN) and Executive Director of Centre for Caring, Empowerment and Peace Initiatives (CCEPI)
Faustina Gablah, Woman Community Leader, Akode Epicenter Ghana, The Hunger Project
Chad McCordic, OneVillage Partners Country Director Sierra Leone
Danyelle O’Hara, Mortenson Family Foundation, Community Relations Officer
Moderated by Gunjan Veda Senior Advisor, Global Collaborative Research and Public Policy for Movement for Community-Led Development (MCLD) and Steve Ogutu, Coordinator, MCLD Kenya