Policy LINK Put ‘Local Communities at the Center’ of USAID’s Work in South Sudan

USAID’s 2022 Collaborating, Learning, and Adapting Case Competition recognized Policy LINK for showing how collaborative approaches “can help put local communities in the driver’s seat after decades of donor dependence.” 

A September 27, 2023 Policy LINK learning event showcased how participatory planning helped South Sudanese communities advocate for their own priorities—an approach that, according to a recent “outcome harvesting” effort commissioned by the program, strengthened USAID resilience programming and set an example for other donors and implementing partners working in fragile contexts. 

Policy LINK offers “an exciting model that I think we can learn from for our work in other fragile and conflict-affected places,” said Mia Beers, Deputy Assistant Administrator of USAID’s Bureau for Resilience and Food Security. Beers, who kicked off the session with opening remarks, commended the Policy LINK team for its “commitment to bring local communities at the center of USAID’s resilience effort.”      

The outcome harvest evaluation showed that Policy LINK’s five-step participatory planning process had improved communities’ collective understanding of the shocks affecting them—like conflict, floods, and food insecurity—while empowering them to  prioritize and articulate their needs to government and donor representatives. Taken together, these outcomes also helped communities view themselves as active agents of change, instead of passive recipients of aid.

“For the longest time, local communities in South Sudan were like dinner guests who get asked what they want to eat, only to show up at the donor table with their meal cooked and plated.”

“For the longest time, local communities in South Sudan were like dinner guests who get asked what they want to eat, only to show up at the donor table with their meal cooked and plated,” said Jeffrey Campbell, who oversaw Policy LINK’s work in South Sudan before it wrapped up in 2022. “That kind of top-down development,” he added, “is what Policy LINK set out to upend.”  

Donors and implementing partners increasingly recognize the importance of empowering communities to advocate for and lead their own resilience activities as a way to advance USAID’s localization goals while sustaining development outcomes. Yet evidence on how to effectively put communities at the center of resilience programming—and aid effectiveness more broadly—has been lacking.

Download the event background brief.

“Harvesting was an appropriate evaluation method for South Sudan because of the complex shock environment that [Policy LINK was] operating in,” said Katherine Englert, lead author of the outcome harvest report and an associate with Policy LINK consortium member Headlight Consulting Services. Englert, who works on Collaboration, Learning, Adaptation, Monitoring and Evaluation—or CLAME—initiatives, outlined the rigorous process she and her team used to collect and analyze information from more than 130 interviews in South Sudan’s Jur River and Wau counties, where Policy LINK led efforts to engage communities within USAID’s Resilience Focus Zone. 

In 2022, Policy LINK’s submission to USAID’s Collaborating, Learning, and Adapting Case Competition, “Toward a Community-Led Approach to Building Resilience in South Sudan,” was selected for special mention from more than 120 submissions from across the international development community. In its announcement, USAID said that Policy LINK’s case study stood out because it demonstrated how collaborative approaches “can help put local communities in the driver’s seat after decades of donor dependence.” 

Closing out the September 27 session, Jessie Anderson, Senior Conflict Advisor for USAID’s Bureau for Resilience and Food Security, said that, although community-led resilience programming can seem too difficult in conflict- and shock-affected zones like South Sudan, Policy LINK’s work had shown that it is both possible and can lead to positive development outcomes. 

You can learn more about Policy LINK’s work in South Sudan as well as read the outcome harvest report in the program’s online resource portal, which is available here. To read more stories about Policy LINK’s work, visit policylinkglobal.org/newsroom.