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Local Organizations in Development
March 1984
>> This Is USAID >> USAID Policy Papers >> Local Organizations in Development
Executive Summary II. Types of Local Organizations
III. The Role of Local Organizations in USAID's Program
IV. Overcoming Limitations of Local Organizations
Wednesday, 11-Jul-2001 16:50:20 EDT
[Download original document] Local organizations (e.g., primary cooperatives, local governments, informal associations) play important roles in the development process: Executive Summary
- by generating revenue to supplement investments made by donors and central governments;
- by implementing, channeling, or filtering the impact of centrally-planned interventions;
- by providing independent avenues for the expression of private development initiative; and
- by communicating to. central authorities local needs, capacities, and requirements.
Hence, it is USAID policy to provide direct and indirect support to a wide range of public and private local organizations. This support is meant to ensure that individual citizens are effectively and directly involved in development through local organizations that link them to national-level resources and processes; to further the democratic participation of people in assistance activities directed towards them; and to encourage the development of indigenous organizations that meet people's requirements for sustained economic and social progress.
To accomplish these policy objectives, which are aimed at generating broadly-based, self-sustaining development, USAID will undertake a range of appropriate activities including but not limited to the following:
- Policy dialogue with host country governments to define the relative roles and responsibilities of central authorities and local organizations. USAID holds that policy analysis should be directed at administrative and institutional, as well as economic, policies and that one element of policy reform should be to ensure that local organizations are free to perform their developmental roles.
- Programmed assistance to host countries in order (a) to improve the administrative and/or economic envirnoment within which local organizations function; (b) to strengthen intermediary organizations, such as national cooperative banks, PVOs, or women's associations, that in turn may support development-oriented local organizations; and W to provide direct support to local organizations through technical assistance, training, and financial and commodity assistance. In practice this, too, will ordinarily be done through intermediaries but it is important to distinguish between assistance that strengthens intermediaries and assistance that strengthens the bottom tier of organizations.
Finally, there is a general presumption in favor of supporting pre-existing local organizations instead of creating new organizations because (a) very often a careful appraisal of rural society will reveal organizations performing precisely those tasks planners deem important; (b) existing organizations persist because they meet real needs and serve their clientele well, whereas new organizations may take years to become effective and to gain local credibility; and (c) even where existing local organizations seem deficient to planners it is unlikely that new organizations will escape whatever administrative, technical, or political pathologies are weakening the existing organizations. Hence, USAID will seek to build on or rehabilitate existing local organizations prior to considering the development of new ones.
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Last Updated on: July 11, 2001 |
