Overview of CARE’s Localization Approach
CARE seeks to contribute to the sustainable transition of leadership and ownership of development and humanitarian assistance to a range of public, private, and civil society partners.
CARE’s Localization efforts support diverse local actors in over 100 countries to define priorities, design solutions, drive implementation, and sustain efforts tailored to their unique development and/or humanitarian context. CARE does this while aiming to maximize impact across six priorities – Gender Equality, Humanitarian Response, Food Security, Water and Nutrition, Economic Justice for Women, Right to Health, and Climate Justice.
In line with CARE’s SCoRE Framework for Localization, CARE fosters conditions and approaches that shift power to local actors by:
Strengthening capacity: Enhancing the systems and capacity of local partners to implement and sustain programs and the change they enable, while supporting local leaders, amplifying marginalized voices, facilitating capacity sharing, and ensuring effective, inclusive, and accountable governance with and for their communities;
Co-creating: Bringing together the perspectives, needs, local knowledge and thought leadership of local partners, communities, impact populations, and other stakeholders to ensure that development and humanitarian responses are fit for the local context, demand-driven, and tailored to the unique needs of diverse communities, engaging them throughout the project cycle we support;
Resourcing local actors: Channelling resources and strengthening systems to sustain and scale community level work, supporting local partners to absorb, grow, diversify, leverage, and manage their resource base; supporting the transition of key partners to direct donor funding and;
Enhancing networks: Developing, strengthening and amplifying local networks that enable coordination, inclusive programming, capacity sharing, and collective action.