All Development Is Local
Dr. Alma Crumm Golden, USAID Assistant Administrator for Global Health, reflects on the power of partnering with local organizations. 

To deliver on the Journey to Self-Reliance, it is essential we invest in building a new universe of great ideas and harness the talent of organizations across our partner countries. This belief is the driving force behind the New Partnerships Initiative, through which we relaunched our efforts to capitalize on the ingenuity, insight, and expertise of partners around the world that have not worked with us before, or only in a limited capacity. 

Local partners have an incredible dedication to the people they serve and have an invaluable understanding of the needs and interests of the communities where they live and work. They can leverage their networks to expand their reach and reduce costs, and they are highly motivated to be accountable and transparent. Most powerful in ensuring their success, local partners are a trusted presence.

One of the significant achievements of NPI so far is identifying many of the barriers that limited the involvement of new partners and creating potential solutions so that new partners would be welcomed, mentored, and then assisted in achieving their work as USAID implementing partners. Indeed, supporting the organizational development and strengthening the capacity of new partners across their operations is a central focus of NPI and the NPI Incubator. We see this as critical in accelerating the progress of our partner countries on their Journey to Self-Reliance.

I think a unique component of NPI is its emphasis on co-creation–facilitating collaboration on ideas between potential new partners and the Agency–or even with several potential partners.

Co-creation builds a sense of openness and shared opportunity, which makes for stronger program design and execution. NPI’s power is to bring diverse partners together to generate innovative solutions to address a common problem in a way that neither party would have developed on its own. Consider this: Intersections occur between local implementing partners and local businesses. And, civil society and faith-based groups often have great communication and coordination functions that strengthen a whole partnership.

For example, let us say there are eight different organizations offering support on a water project. Some of these organizations may be funded through an independent foundation, a faith-based group, or perhaps another international donor. One or two may be small local enterprises; one or two may be new partners. By bringing them together to address a challenge, we have an opportunity to share expertise, standards of care, and maybe to design a more holistic solution to the challenge. One organization has a strong capability for training women in sanitation. Another can focus on delivering education about hygiene standards. A third can focus on building a water reservoir or pipeline, creating jobs in the process. In other words, together we are looking at all aspects of the problem, sharing resources, and creating a solution that will have an even greater impact in that community and beyond.

If USAID can bring together disparate entities into a new partnership–not necessarily from a funding standpoint but to solve a shared problem–then we have accomplished our objective.

This, I believe, is the promise of NPI: to forge new partnerships to address complicated challenges with greater creativity, with the goal to make the world safer, healthier, and more prosperous for people everywhere.