A workshop on localisation approaches, bringing together practitioners and researchers to exchange experiences and share evidence and good practices on what successful localisation requires — from the conditions that enable it to the ways those conditions can be created and sustained.
Localisation, the shift towards locally led and locally owned approaches in international responses, is a well-established concept across humanitarian, development and peace fields. Yet while the term itself is widely recognised, the emphasis placed on its different dimensions varies considerably across sectors and contexts. For some, localisation is fundamentally a governance question about who holds decision-making power. For others, it has simply been an institutional way of working — practised long before localisation became a standard term in the field. It can also be approached through the lens of ensuring local voices are heard in international forums or understood more narrowly through the angle of funding flows and resource allocation.
At a time when geopolitical pressures, top-down decision-making, and transactional approaches to international cooperation are on the rise, localisation offers a meaningful and necessary counterweight — one that places communities, local organisations, and local knowledge at the centre of responses. Yet the funding environment and the ongoing reforms, at least in the humanitarian sector, risk undoing some of the shifts and achievements of the past decade.
This workshop brings together practitioners and researchers for an action-oriented conversation focused on what actually works. The discussion will explore the common elements of successful localisation approaches, the conditions that enable them to take root and sustain, and how those conditions can be deliberately created and supported.
Speakers:
Puntland Development Research Centre (Somalia) - Fardowsa Ahmed Gambol
Support to Life (Türkiye) - Sema Genel Karaosmanolu
IARAN (UK) - Michel Maietta
Grand Bargain (Belgium) - Michael Koehler
Pawanka Fund (Nicaragua) - Edna Kaptoyo
START Network (UK) - Daniel Gorevan
Utopia Association (Lebanon) - Suha Allouche
Florence School of Transnational Governance - Massimo Putti
If you want to join the satellite hub in Nairobi, which will connect remotely, please contact Meghan Brown at meghan@howtobuildup.org .