CCFD-Terre Solidaire: an aid localisation approach implemented for more than sixty years based on partnerships

CCFD-Terre Solidaire has been been working with CSOs from all over the world for over sixty years. The organisation’s approach to aid localisation, which is referred to internally as the ‘partnership approach’, is based on the three following principles:

• Mutual trust based on long-term relationships (often over ten years);
• Initiatives and projects that are designed and proposed by the local partners themselves, and which are therefore adapted to, and rooted in the local context;
• Support from CCFD-Terre Solidaire to establish projects that are realistic and sustainable, and correspond to the ambitions of the local partner (in terms of human, financial and material resources, and training).

CCFD-Terre Solidaire fully accepts its role as an intermediary between local realities and actors (including economic actors, funding agencies/donors, but also the volunteers and the social base of our organisation). This role also corresponds to the relationship between ‘here’ and ‘there’ that is at stake in local partnerships. Aid localisation that is limited to relocating funding channels without any involvement in the definition, management and monitoring of field operations comes with a number of preconditions (and can also bring significant risks):

• Make sure that a variety of actors on the ground are supported (in order to increase social change and impact), which means not focusing funding only on local CSOs who are capable of answering a call for proposals, given the competition between organisations imposed by donors, etc. In order to ensure that there is diversity, it is important to also support ‘smaller’ CSOs who can be just as ‘activist’, if not more;
• Accompany projects for their duration, providing a supportive (and trusting) external point of view to help find solutions in the field and within organisations. Help to train CSOs to work with donor frameworks and demands (measures to limit money laundering, fiduciary risks, cash advances, etc.);
• Take care not to endanger certain CSOs whose economic models may not be compatible with (sometimes slow) donor processes, and which can lead to their bankruptcy (for example, the need for cash advances, etc.);
• Do not transform local CSOs into ‘service providers’ for the international aid system. This would be detrimental to their position as agents of change, whistleblowers and activists.
• Support the voluntary activities that allow local CSOs to exist, decide and plan in a democratic and participatory manner.

In order to limit these risks, CCFD-Terre Solidaire acts as an intermediary, which allows it to:

• Give a major role to local CSOs in project governance and in the territories (in relation to international aid organisations who have far more resources);
• Support and reinforce the capacity of local actors in order to ensure that citizen- and association-based activities continue to exist in the long term, and to allow these actors to increase their competencies so that they can be autonomous;
• Help manage resources and risks (advancing funds, meeting donor demands, COTER, etc.), as well as limit the impact of the bureaucratisation of international aid which imposes more and more procedures on local SCOs to the detriment of concrete action.

To conclude, this approach concerns ‘organisations who carry out projects (to bring about change in their region)’ rather than a purely project-based approach, with earmarked funds, that does not take the local CSO context into account. This organisation-based approach depends on mutual knowledge between partners and a level of trust that allows ‘peer-to-peer’ interaction; what we call reciprocity. In other words, a very concrete form of solidarity.

Pierre Bastid is Head of Support and Institutional Funding at CCFD-Terre Solidaire