The Time is Now: Living Our Values Around Locally Led Development

As part of our 2021–2025 organizational strategy, GHV has made commitments to justice, equity,diversity, inclusion, and locally led development (sometimes referred to as localization). GHV’s commitment to these principles reflects a broader vision of “a world in which the fundamental rights to a healthy life, healthy community, and healthy planet are equally available to all.”  

Locally led development is a practice of changing policies, practices, and funding flows to equitably transfer resources to communities directly so that solutions are created by and in response to their priorities and needs. Transfer of resources to “local” or “Global South” actors to facilitate local leadership, decision-making, and DEI is necessary for shifting power and addressing current power imbalances that persist in our sector. While the wisdom of this approach is now widely accepted and affirmed among the development sector as a matter of impact, justice, efficiency, and economic sustainability, vestiges of colonialism have served as barriers in shifting power and changing the status quo. Despite decades of slow progress, locally led development is gaining momentum driven by the expertise and demands of civil society organizations, community leaders, and national governments.

As a consulting organization with a robust global portfolio that is headquartered in the U.S., we want to recognize our own role in contributing to power and resourcing imbalances in the global health and development field. That said, this positionality does not preclude us from exploring and implementing approaches that can also actively contribute to advancing locally led development.

To strengthen our commitment to locally led development and set the stage for operationalization, GHV engaged two consultants with expertise in locally led develompent, organizational leadership, and change management to develop a framework to guide the organization’s efforts. The framework provides recommendations for GHV across three key pillars of locally led development: people, partnerships, and clients. Within each pillar are specific actions that GHV can take to support locallyled development. Those actions include:

People

• Expand the breadth and depth of staff and consultants from the Global South (and communities experiencing marginalization)
• Reflect staff and experience from the Global South and communities experiencing marginalization in the Leadership + Management Team
• Explore governance pathways that reflect the global nature of GHV’s business model

‍Partnerships

• Develop and test a range of partnership models, including partnerships with locally based consulting firms, academic / research institutions, NGOs and other partners
• Refine and strengthen GHV’s value-added contribution in partnership models

Clients

• Provide clients with consistent, strategic advice to help advance locally led development
• Develop a model for delivering lower fee and/or pro bono support to small, locally rooted clients
• Diversify the client base committed to advancing locally led development
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Our intention is to maintain momentum and integration across our commitments, with locally led development at the center of our efforts. In 2024, we have engaged a decolonization and global equity expert to provide resources and training to GHV consultants. This work will catalyze our role as advocates and change agents to advance principles of DEI, decolonization, and locally led development in GHV’s external facing work with partners – including both consultant partners and clients. Examples for change making and advocacy can include:

• Developing talking points to explain GHV’s organizational commitments to locally led development and DEI
• Sharing policies around compensation for community members who contribute to our projects, as interviewees, panel speakers, and/or expert reviewers
• Modifying frameworks and approaches for integrating local expert voices into project plans and strategy development processes.

Our journey in change making and advocacy, like our journey undertaking powershifting in locally led development is not one-size-fits-all. We recognize that each of GHV consultants, partners, and broader stakeholders are likely navigating their own respective journeys and paths toward locally led development; we respect organizations at different stages of this journey and strive to play a role in supporting their progress.

Crucial to this process will also be communicating what we’ve learned and inviting others in the sector to participate in conversations around locally led development. Therefore, GHV will document these activities and assess the outcomes with the aim of using our learnings to refine the framework in the coming years. We will communicate these learnings widely both internally and externally. While we approach this work with humility, we also hope that jumping in and learning as we go will inspire other organizations to do the same. We look forward to updating you as this vital work progresses.

We’d also love to hear how you are addressing locally led development within your organizations. Please share your thoughts with us at info@ghvisions.com.