Impact of Community-Led Development on Food Security (lnCLuDE): A Rapid Realist Review

Community-Led Development (CLD -also known as Locally-Led Development, LLD) is increasingly recognized as a scalable pathway-of-choice to steer communities towards resilience and to ensure sustainability of desirable development outcomes. Advocates argue that putting communities at the center of development supports effective and efficient program implementation, enhances sustainability, facilitates poverty reduction at scale, increases social capital and strengthens governance. However, there is relatively little understanding of the current practice of CLD – what works, where, why and how? – resulting in calls for greater evidence-based learning about the practice of CLD for improved program design and sustainable results.

In response to this need, The Movement for Community-Led Development (MCLD) started a multi-phase collaborative research program in April 2019. In the first phase, MCLD looked at the current practice of Community-Led Development (CLD) across 173 programs in 65 countries and developed two tools– one to strengthen CLD practice and another to assess the quality of CLD evaluation reports. The second phase included dissemination of the study and tools, and this rapid realist review. Realist reviews seek to understand how types of interventions generate their outcomes – that is, the underlying causes of outcomes -and why outcomes vary for different populations or contexts. This review sought to answer the question “How and in what contexts do key aspects of CLD – particularly leadership and facilitation – contribute to resilience and equity in relation to food security?”

This product was funded by the IDEAL Small Grants Program. To learn more about this specific grant, click here.