Local Capacity Strengthening Policy

After 15 years of working with communities I was exhausted by seeing donors, including USAID, sometimes get it right, and sometimes fail spectacularly. We had decades of evidence about what makes capacity strengthening effective but it wasn’t always being used. The Local Capacity Strengthening (LCS) Policy brought that evidence into USAID policy and practice. Those resources disappeared with the closing of USAID. Now Local Works Global is making them available again and they are more relevant than ever.

The original visionaries and systems thinkers who fought for the policy stood in the hallways outside of meetings and squeezed items into agendas. Through privilege, luck, and sincere pleading I had the opportunity to help facilitate the policy drafting team while I was at Training Resources Group (TRG) and then later to join the USAID team to lead the implementation of what is so core to how USAID worked.

The LCS Policy was released on October 19, 2022 in English, Spanish, French, Arabic, and Kiswahili — the only USAID guidance to be institutionally translated into four additional languages. The launch and the tidal wave of resources that followed showed how unique the policy was in the constellation of guidance from the Agency. The LCS Policy was not part of one administration’s political agenda, but instead came from USAID staff, partners, and the communities USAID worked with. A bottom-up policy, its development spanned two administrations and it was one of the most consultative policy-development processes the Agency had undertaken.

The LCS Policy marked an important evolution in USAID’s approach. For the first time, the US Government officially recognized that strengthening local capacity is not about transferring skills or institutional models from elsewhere. Rather, it is about enabling local actors to define their own priorities, build on existing strengths, strengthen the systems in which they operate, and achieve lasting results on their own terms.

The policy is organized around seven mutually reinforcing principles grouped under two complementary themes: effective programming and equitable partnerships.

The principles for effective programming recognize that intentional investments in local capacity can contribute to broader systems change and more sustainable development outcomes. The principles for equitable partnerships focus on how development actors work together to realize that positive change.

Although developed for USAID, the ideas contained in this policy extend well beyond any single institution and have been used and adopted by organizations, teams, and communities since its launch. Before the shutdown of the USAID website, the LCS Policy website was the most visited policy page for the entire Agency. The principles and resources that Local Works Global are making available once again, offer practical guidance for governments, donors, civil society organizations, philanthropic foundations, researchers, and practitioners seeking to support locally led development through partnerships that strengthen—not supplant—local leadership.

The spirit of partnership with local leadership continued during the implementation phase of the LCS Policy. Implementation priorities were developed with insight and feedback from USAID Missions globally, had a cross-bureau and global implementation team, and feedback and accountability was encouraged regularly but especially during annual virtual forums. To give you a flavor of that level of engagement, the annual LCS Policy Learning and Feedback virtual forum in 2024 had over 1,300 individual attendees from 111 countries and had 78 speakers from 25 countries over 15 sessions. While the principles of the LCS Policy are global and guiding, different sectors, USAID Missions, and implementing partners transformed and applied the principles to be meaningful to their own contexts. We’ll be sharing those resources too over the coming months.

We hope by restoring access to these materials we will preserve an important part of the field’s collective knowledge. We also hope that sharing these resources supports the continued application of and inspiration from the Local Capacity Strengthening Policy principles as well as the ongoing evolution of effective and equitable locally led development.

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