Building Grassroots Women’s Leadership, Community Organizing and Good Governance through Learning the Local-to-Local Dialogue Process

	Esther Mwaura-Muiru from GROOTS Kenya facilitating a dialogue.

March 25|Accra, Ghana

What is the Local-to-Local Dialogue process?  How can it be used to build women’s voice and leadership in the community and enhance local governance?  Who is it that takes this process forward?  Last week over forty women leaders, representing grassroots women’s self-help groups, and women-focused CBOs and NGOs from twelve countries across West, East and Southern Africa took up these questions and others during the Community Facilitators Training on the Local to Local Dialogue. Organized by the Huairou Commission, with facilitation by GROOTS Kenya and UCOBAC, in partnership with the UN-Habitat Gender Mainstreaming Unit and support by the Government of Norway, the training was a part of an on-going initiative of the Huairou Commission to support women’s leadership, community organizing and partnership building at the local level using the Local to Local Dialogue process. 

Recognizing the unequal balance of power and decision-making in many countries across the world, the Huairou Commission has been supporting the development of processes at the local level that build women’s leadership and community over the past ten years.  The Local to Local dialogue is one such example.  Initially piloted in 2002 as a means to build women’s ability to engage with local leadership and authorities, the Local to Local dialogue process has developed into an effective strategy to enhance women’s leadership and create sustained partnerships with decision-makers at the community level.

Everyday in communities across the world meetings are held with varied stakeholders to discuss pressing issues, but these meetings aren’t necessarily a Local to Local dialogue. Often, such meetings are called by individuals or institutions who have an interest in issues that affect a community, such as local government, NGOs and local businesses, but only bring the community into the process after needs and issues have been identified.  This method can result in a solution to a particular issue, but frequently, agreements are not followed up and/or the relationships between the community and partners are not sustained. In contrast, participants of the Local to Local dialogue training learned that a Local to Local dialogue starts with the community – communities are the ones that identify their shared values, prioritize their needs, map the resources (both within and outside the community) and identify stakeholders and allies to dialogue and partner with.  A key element of the Local to Local dialogue process is to shift the power to the community, enabling them to table and prioritize their issues, analyze the roles and responsibilities of stakeholders, and ensure these issues are resolved.

The Local to Local dialogue training was an opportunity for grassroots leaders to build skills to enhance grassroots women’s ability to lead and drive such as process.  The training focused on developing leadership support skills, key elements of the Local to Local dialogue, identifying and shifting power relationships, and building community coalitions and grassroots women’s networks.  The participants were excited and inspired to take back what they learned from the training and go back to their home communities. 

As the Local to Local dialogue is a process that is designed to strengthen the on-going work of grassroots women’s and community organizations, each of the groups represented in the training took on different types of activities for their follow-up.  Many of the groups realized that they needed to go back home and organize a community-led mapping and prioritization of the issues that affect them.  Others had already been through this mapping process and were ready to implement a dialogue in their communities.  The third action group, comprised of leaders who had already conducted dialogues, planned and prepared to organize community leaders for the follow-up plans.   Participants also committed to share their successes and lessons with the other members of their action group and with the group as a whole as they move together to build women’s leadership and partnerships within their communities.

The Huairou Commission has committed to facilitate communication between a resource group, comprised of experienced leaders throughout the networks to provide feedback, expertise and technical assistance to all the participants as they implement their action plans and dialogues in their own communities across Africa.

Click here to view the Final Report

For more information on this training or the upcoming training in Latin America, please contact sarah.silliman@huairou.org.