Localization_GFSS Activity Design

Government's Global Food Security Strategy Activity Design Guidance emphasizes the importance of local ownership and capacity in achieving sustainable agricultural development outcomes. The strategy outlines an approach to empower individuals and communities in the design, implementation, execution, and ownership of development activities aimed at reducing global poverty, hunger, and malnutrition. To realize the full benefits of a local approach, it is essential to include people from marginalized and underrepresented groups in the decision-making process. This includes women and girls, persons with disabilities, LGBTQI+ individuals, displaced persons, migrants, Indigenous Peoples, youth, the elderly, nondominant religious groups, nondominant racial and ethnic groups, people in lower castes, and persons with mental health needs. A diverse group of people is best positioned to identify solutions that meet their community's needs. The strategy defines localization as a set of internal reforms, actions, and behavior changes that ensure local actors are in the lead, strengthen local systems, and are responsive to local communities. This can be supported through various means, including adapting policies and programs to foster locally led development, shifting power to local actors, channeling funding directly to local partners, and serving as a global advocate for locally led development. The strategy supports localization through three mutually reinforcing practices: locally led development, local systems practice, and local capacity strengthening. Locally led development refers to the process by which local actors set their own development agendas, develop and implement solutions, and promote equitable change. Local systems practice involves understanding development results and suggesting interventions to achieve sustainability by strengthening system performance, developing local capacities, deepening interrelationships between local actors, improving equity, and aligning incentives. Local capacity strengthening is a strategic investment in partnering with local actors to jointly improve the performance of a local system and produce locally valued and sustainable development outcomes. Capacity encompasses knowledge, skills, motivations, and relationships that enable an actor to take action, learn, adapt, and innovate over time. Designing activities that align with the programming approaches and principles to support locally led development, apply a local systems perspective, and strengthen local capacity is crucial for ensuring that programming contributes to the overall vision for localization. Locally led development involves supporting local actors to lead priority setting, design, management, measurement, and other processes through which development assistance contributes to the achievement of development outcomes. Feed the Future can integrate locally led development practices into programming through approaches such as listening tours, pause and reflect with local actors using the Locally Led Development Spectrum and Checklist Tool, and co-creation with local communities. A focus on local systems involves understanding that achieving and sustaining development outcomes depends on the contributions of multiple and interconnected actors, and strengthening the capacity of a single actor or relationship is insufficient. Participatory systems analysis involves Feed the Future staff, local actors and partners, and international actors and partners coming together to jointly make sense of and understand how the local system functions, its strengths and existing capacities and resources. This approach can help identify opportunities for improvement and inform the design of development programming that is responsive to local needs and priorities.