Bridging the divide between grassroots actors and current global development and funding practices for children and youth

Community based organizations and child wellbeing in eastern and southern Africa: defining social change, effectiveness, and success

A new article from the journal Development in Practice (August 2022) challenges global development actors to recalibrate their conceptualizations of and support for how change happens at the grassroots level for children, youth, and their families. The article, co-authored by four community-based organization leaders and Firelight presents and discusses findings from a nine-country research study commissioned by Firelight to understand the perspectives of CBO leaders and practitioners around the role of CBOs in social change for child and youth wellbeing in eastern and southern Africa. The research and its findings explore how CBOs themselves define success and effectiveness, the enablers and challenges they face, as well as CBO perspectives on fundings partnerships.

The study found important misalignments in how CBOs’ role, effectiveness, and success are understood and supported, especially by funders and the global development community. Even though funders, INGOs, and other global development actors widely express commitment to impactful and sustainable change at the community level, and are increasingly partnering with CBOs towards this goal, their perspectives and systems are significantly disconnected from those of CBOs themselves. The study calls on funders and INGOs to listen deeply and learn from CBOs and communities themselves about what effective and lasting social change looks like at the community level, and how it can be nurtured and catalyzed, in order to more effectively partner with, support, and fund their work.

 You can read the journal article here –

Community based organizations and child wellbeing in sub-Sahara Africa: defining social change, effectiveness, and success By Susan Wilkinson-Maposa, Sadaf Shallwani, Mary Kabati, Prosper Ndaiga, Saeed Wame & Moses Zulu (2022). Development in Practice DOI: 10.1080/09614524.2022.2108763 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09614524.2022.2108763

 You can also access our practice-oriented summary of the research findings and recommendations for funders and development actors here - Community-Driven Systems Change: the power of grassroots-led change for long-term impact and how funders can nurture it.