Locally Led Development: Engaging Local Stakeholders in Building An Evidence Base

For two months in the Spring of 2020, the Office of Local Sustainability’s Evidence and Learning Team invited staff from across USAID to join us in exploring how the Agency approaches its generation and use of evidence from the perspective of locally led development. Our seven-part Standards of Evidence for Locally Led Development series brought together eight expert presenters and more than 670 participants to engage in conversations ranging from scientific research to complexity-aware monitoring to ethical considerations when conducting research. This blog post outlines some of our key learnings from the series and introduces the topics covered by each presenter. We encourage you to explore the event resources and share your own takeaways in the comment section below. WHAT DID WE LEARN? Three key themes emerged from the series: - Practitioners should draw on a wide range of evidence to inform locally led development programming. - Local actors can provide important contextual knowledge throughout the life of your research programs. - Prioritize local actors as the end users for your evidence to help them build their own self-reliance and increase sustainability of your program’s outcomes.