Power Shift: Locally-Led Solutions 4 Global Change

“It’s past time we walk the talk.”  ~ This April 2025 plea for help was one of many CDA received from leaders of US-based international organizations, each looking for guidance to move from commitment to action, shifting power for local leadership.

The historic aid funding cuts since January 2025 are having widespread, harmful impacts. The scope of the change has also finally sparked movement on the stubbornly slow goal of getting more resources under the control of more locally-led groups for more locally-led solutions. 

This vision is central to CDA's research, leading to practical frameworks, that become standards for humanitarians and peacebuilders everywhere. And CDA is meeting this transformational moment.  

With your support to the “Power Shift: Locally-Led Solutions 4 Global Change” campaign, CDA is: 

• Expanding free access to tools: The robust suite of evidence-based guidance for responsible international-to-local leadership is now freely accessible on two global practitioner platforms, with a third underway, plus CDA’s own website. Collectively, these platforms are accessed by over 10,000 practitioners per month.
• Modeling what is possible: After our own US grant was terminated, CDA and partners launched the Transformation Futures report, presenting 10 "pathways" that organizations have taken and can take inspiration from for locally-led solutions to thrive. The campaign fueled widespread dissemination to organizations and funders re-strategizing right now. 
• Catalyzing real-time learning: CDA hosted a ‘futures thinking’ consultation with 15 local leaders and global partners to identify initiatives happening now -- despite global funding disruptions -- showing that the solid foundation of local leadership already exists. The forthcoming compendium of stories will accompany Transformation Futures, giving strategic planners and funding partners the confidence to act. 
• At the table of sector-wide change: CDA leadership has been recruited to join numerous private, bi-lateral, and multi-lateral funder and policy forums between March and July 2025, concurrent with our direct work with local organizations from Ukraine to Kenya to the Amazon Basin. Since each forum focuses on an aspect of local leadership in the future -- peacebuilding, humanitarian action, climate adaptation, and philanthropy -- CDA's presence is connecting dots and generating viable options for collective action. 

We greatly appreciate your belief in these immediate-term activities as we envision and build more equitable and impactful futures! We would love to hear your thoughts and ideas as the journy continues. Thank you! 

Links:

• Access the Transformation Futures report!
• CDA's 30-Year Tapestry: Community Wisdom in Global Action