Our Work
We are building the community and evidence needed to ensure that locally led development isn't just a talking point, but the standard.
We do this by sustaining a network of practitioners who have lived this work every day, building the knowledge base that makes the case for change, and engaging the policymakers, funders, and publics who shape what comes next.
What We Do
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At the heart of LWG is a community of locally led development practitioners across the globe. We engage our network by:
Facilitating peer exchange among members working across locally led development contexts globally
Amplifying member voices and expertise in spaces where sector norms get made
Convening our stakeholders around emerging policy and practice opportunities
Providing targeted technical assistance to member organizations
Or network is a peer community built on the conviction that the people closest to the work have the most important things to say about it.
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The window for change is open. We engage policymakers, Congressional staff, journalists, academics, and other key audiences to advance locally led development as a practical, credible, and ready alternative to the status quo.
In addition to sharing what we and our network are thinking, we are developing a Locally Led Development Playbook — a concrete policy, legal, and operational framework for the next generation of U.S. foreign assistance. Not a vision document, but a blueprint.
Interested in more information? Reach out and see what more is possible.
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We organize LWG's collective knowledge and translate it into publications, research, and public engagement that moves the needle — on funder expectations, on policy design, and on what "good" looks like in international development.
We aim to expand our evidence base by building on existing research to deepen what we know about long-term outcomes and what it actually takes to shift power sustainably.
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Building on over a decade of locally led experience, LWG offers strategic advising and consulting to funders, implementers, and institutions looking to shift their practice toward locally led approaches. Explore our services.
Where We’re Heading
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We know how grantmaking works inside large institutions — and where it falls short.
Drawing on over a decade of locally led grantmaking experience within USAID and approaches from trust-based and solidarity philanthropy, we are developing funding models designed to do it differently: co-created with communities from the start, structured to reduce burden on community-based partners, supportive of partner-led organizational capacity strengthening, and built with learning mechanisms that contribute to how the broader field understands what works.
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Lasting change in how the U.S. engages with the world requires a public that understands what's at stake and sees itself in the story.
We are working to build a broad domestic constituency for global cooperation: one rooted in community leadership and the idea that international development is not something done to other places but with people who share our interests and our humanity. We're expanding who gets to participate in that conversation — beyond governments and large institutions, toward communities, grassroots organizations, and everyday Americans.
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Some of the most powerful models of global cooperation don't run through official channels at all. Faith communities, peacebuilding networks, diaspora organizations, academic institutions — people have always found ways to build relationships and solve problems across borders.
We are learning from and investing in these people-led models of cooperation, and exploring how community-to-community connections can complement or offer alternatives to traditional government-to-government approaches. We aim to build direct community-to-community connections across borders around shared challenges and opportunities for reciprocal exchange, mutual support, and solidarity.