AMALIMA LOKO
AMALIMA LOKO BRIEF
COMMUNITY VISIONING Amalima Loko’s Community Visioning approach is the foundation on which the program builds people-centered efforts to improve food security and resilience, and to promote sustainable development. Rather than setting development priorities externally through a top-down process, Community Visioning empowers local residents to set a course for their communities by defining their own goals and priorities. Combining consortium partner ORAP’s locally proven community mobilization methodologies with global best practices from the Mercy Corps CATALYZE approach, this process serves as the program entry-point for intensive engagement with each of the 562 villages in the program area. Guided by exercises from a toolkit developed by Amalima Loko, this locally-led process brings together community members, civil society, government and traditional leaders to collaboratively determine each community’s unique resources, assets, challenges, and priorities and to create roadmaps, known as Village Action Plans, for achieving their goals.
ACCOMPLISHMENTS TO DATE • 562 Village Action Plans and 89 Ward • •
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This collaborative process is undertaken in three phases:
1. PREPARATION & PLANNING
2. COMMUNITY ACTION
Introduce Community Visioning process to a community and local government stakeholders, then support the community to assess their resources, challenges, and risks; identify development priorities, and create action plans to deliver solutions.
Community implements priority activities from their action plan using resources mobilized either locally or externally. Women, youth, and marginalized groups are intentionally engaged in these actions.
Transformation Plans developed. 29,862 citizens participated (60% female, 40% male; 26% youth; 601 persons with disabilities) 99 villages have begun implementing collective actions from their Village Action Plans using community resources or through partnerships with private sector, government, and NGOs. 7,242 community members participated in collective actions. Amalima Loko has supported communities by delivering prioritized actions including drilling and rehabilitating boreholes and completing conservation works to reduce erosion threatening public assets such as schools, health facilities and grazing lands.
3. SUSTAINING Amalima Loko continues to partner with the community to identify and build resources, skills, capacities, and linkages needed to sustain community planning and action after program support ends.
1. PREPARATION AND PLANNING STAGE Amalima Loko begins the Community Visioning process by conducting introductory meetings at villageand ward-level to build understanding of, support for, and consensus around, the Community Visioning process with community leadership. Once a plan for rolling out the Community Visioning process has been defined, the program starts to engage the wider community, building trusted relationships and fostering a sense of local ownership and enthusiasm for the process. During this period, Amalima Loko works closely with each community to identify different socio-economic groups and intentionally ensure inclusion and representative participation of those groups.
This brief was made possible by the support of the American people through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The contents are the responsibility of CNFA and do not necessarily reflect the views of USAID or the United States Government.