Advocacy to support local partners engaging with policy makers at the Global Partnerships Conference and beyond
For more information or interview requests, please contact:
Rosalind Mayfield, CAFOD Media Officer
Melissa Nethersole, CAFOD Media Officer
CAFOD’s out-of-hours media line
Recentring humanitarian funding and partnerships in the leadership of local actors requires each stakeholder to commit to change.
Tell us how you and your organisation can support that change.
Beyond the conference, CAFOD is supporting local civil society partners, and their networks at country and global levels, to both put innovative locally-led humanitarian action into practice, and to advocate for systemic changes in how donors and international agencies use their funds and influence to reinforce their efforts.
Three specific tracks for our advocacy with local partners are as follows:
Investing in local civil society networks and platforms to organise and drive change – CAFOD has given support both to local actor networks and local actor led consortia in contexts as diverse as Ukraine, Myanmar, Syria and DRC; and to the Grand Bargain National Reference Groups (NRGs), which are seeking to model a new structured approach to policy dialogue led by local actors at country-level which also connects into and inspires global-level changes in policy and practice.
Opening up the space for local civil society representatives to directly influence donor governments, international agencies and multilateral processes – such as the Grand Bargain and the UN-led Humanitarian Reset – on locally led humanitarian action. For example, we are collaborating with the Alliance of Ukrainian CSOs and Swiss Development Cooperation to convene the Grand Bargain Subgroup on Intermediary Agencies and Modern Partnerships. Through that Subgroup, we are facilitating a space in which local actors can put forward their recommendations on how to hold international humanitarian agencies accountable for equitable partnership, and enabling a shift to local leadership.
Supporting research and learning to document the effectiveness of locally-led crisis response – CAFOD is collaborating with local researchers and practitioners to help generate the evidence of how and why local leadership is effective in saving lives in times of crisis.
As part of the above effort, towards the Grand Bargain Annual Meeting and beyond, CAFOD is liaising with both local civil society partners, international agencies and donors to identify both practical examples of innovation that deserve to be profiled, and commitments to act on changing policy and practice in ways that centre local leadership in humanitarian aid.
CAFOD is providing both funding, technical support and accompaniment to local civil society partners who are leading coordination platforms, funding mechanisms and humanitarian programmes that scale up local leadership of crisis response.
Two practical examples:
Bridging science, government and community knowledge and ownership is vital for anticipatory action to deliver on its potential; especially in a context like the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the presence of state institutions is weak across much of the country.
Caritas Kindu – a local diocesan church organisation – worked with Start Network funding and CAFOD support to build partnerships with community leaders, local government authorities, the national and local sub-office of METELSAT (National Agency of Meteorology and Satellite Remote Sensing), Civil Protection and others to bridge those gaps. A ‘Five Senses’ Early Warning tool was developed and integrated into a Community Early Warning System.
The project has catalysed investment across humanitarian, resilience and development efforts, and extended to collaboration with other agencies, including WFP, FAO, IFRC, ECHO and RSS-Hydro. Together with those agencies and the government Civil Protection department, a new national-level Technical Working Group on Anticipatory Action is being established to drive wider change in DRC.
Building grassroots women's power: Strengthening local structures for women's participation and economic resilience through Village Savings and Loan Associations (VSLAs) with 15,000 women reached on financial literacy and savings-led empowerment.
Leading the coordination landscape: HRSS chairs the Start Network South Sudan Hub, serves on the Start Network Global Board of Trustees and Start Fund Strategic Committee, and actively co-chairs multiple UN humanitarian clusters multiplying local women's voice and influence at the highest levels.
Forging WLO-centred partnerships: Actively collaborating with other women-led organisations to develop NGO consortia and funding partnerships that place WLO leadership at the heart of crisis response.
Find out more about CAFOD Partner Hope Restoration
CAFOD is collaborating with local civil society partners, donors and international agencies to promote practical and transformative change in how international humanitarian agencies – both international NGOs, UN agencies and others – are working to scale up local leadership of crisis response, and to practice accountability for equitable partnership with local actors.
Two practical examples:
Participants share feedback after receiving winter kits in Nepal. Credit: Start Fund Nepal
Start Network is currently exploring the development of a pooled Network Risk-Sharing Facility, a collective financial protection mechanism designed to help absorb and manage delivery risks across the network. Similar to a mutual support or insurance-style fund, small contributions linked to grant funding would be pooled into a shared reserve that organisations could access when facing unexpected financial shocks during humanitarian response.
Under the proposed model, organisations could apply for support in situations such as funding disallowances, delayed reimbursements, liquidity gaps, banking disruptions, or pre-financing constraints. A core objective is to reduce the burden on smaller LNNGOs to build reserve balances from already stretched resources, whilst enabling faster mobilisation of funding and humanitarian response.
“What enabled a genuine partnership-centred model was not new processes, tools or templates, but a shift in mindset: from control to collaboration, from compliance to conversation.”
