Mobilising communities and a global movement

Right2Grow partners all work closely together with communities, mobilising them to take ownership of local development. Community mobilisation is the foundation for all other engagement and lobby and advocacy in the Right2Grow programme: from local to national and even global levels. Right2Grow builds on existing relations between partners and mobilised communities, and the programme includes mobilisation in new intervention areas.

Mobilising communities: Vision, Commitment and Action

At community level in remote rural areas, The Hunger Project (THP) starts by mobilising women as change agents through its Vision, Commitment and Action (VCA) methodology. THP then invests in the capacity of community volunteers to jointly create, plan, advocate for, implement, and monitor their own integrated programmes to meet their own basic needs. After about 5 to 8 years of sustained and intensive coaching, communities have accumulated enough experience, confidence, and self-generated revenue to continue their work to meet their own self-defined targets, as self-reliant organisations, in close partnership with their local government. Advocating for public services and budgets is crucial for the sustainability of the impact.

Community-led development is at the heart of Right2Grow

Sustainable impact

Baseline, mid- and end-term evaluations of THP’s approach provide ample impact evidence: improved nutrition, WASH, and farming practices; a reduction in severe hunger and in poverty; increased confidence and an improvement in the status and leadership positions of women; an increase in women’s dietary diversity and the use of home gardens; an increase in prenatal and child monitoring check-ups, and a wide range of other reported benefits. Furthermore, a recent independent ex-post evaluation shows that these positive changes are sustained and often even further improved over time, years after the support by THP has ended.

Building a global movement for community-led development

Right2Grow capitalises on the experiences with THP’s long-term integrated and community-led rural development programmes. It builds on existing intervention areas, to strengthen the advocacy capacity of mobilised communities and documents the experiences for policy influencing and support the scaling up of this and similar integrated, community-led approaches.

All Right2Grow consortium members are part of the growing global Movement for Community-Led Development: over 70 international non-profits, who work together to create and achieve locally owned visions and goals. The movement organises global learning sessions as well as a range of national chapters, including in Right2Grow programme countries Uganda, Ethiopia, Burkina Faso and in the Netherlands. Lessons learnt in Right2Grow will also be shared through these platforms.