On September 25th, 2015, at the UN headquarters, 193 world leaders committed to the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which aim to end poverty, fight inequality and injustice, and address climate change by 2030. Now, nearly halfway through that declaration, it is necessary to review what is working well and what still needs to be addressed. As the Executive Director of the Foundation of the Healthier Senegal (FOHSEN), I am uniquely positioned to share lessons learned over the last three years and observations of what partners like Dovetail are doing to re-imagine development.

In an attempt to tackle SDG 2 which aims to end hunger and all forms of malnutrition and SDG 3, to ensure healthy lives and promote well-being at all ages, FOHSEN centers its work around a proven approach: community participatory action. This concept is derived from the premise that permanent improvements in healthcare (in FOHSEN’s case) is rarely attainable without the involvement and cooperation of beneficiaries. Many experts have suggested that utilizing a participatory approach “credits people with the ability, even in the most extreme circumstances, to engage with the issues that face them”. While FOHSEN is in its early stages of development, we have maintained the same approach– our decisions are made from and by our communities, then implemented by our team. For example, two weeks ago, we visited team members in Nganda, who are at the core of what we do. These passionate and talented individuals are health workers that have been selected and trained to provide door-to-door essential health services to their fellow community members. In conversations around challenges and successes, they meticulously characterized the challenges that they are facing and proposed a plan for how we should address them. Following the trip, we initiated a plan and followed through with their suggestions. While greater community participation does not necessarily lead to improved outputs for beneficiaries, at FOHSEN, we believe that if we can ensure power relations that exist within our own villages are deconstructed through involvement of our women, youth groups, religious leaders, health workers and elected officials, only then can we construct sustainable systems that do not rely on western or our own misunderstanding.

A lesson that we’ve learned through this mechanism is that while funders from the Global North often attempt to operationalize community participation, they often assign community members and leaders as assistants. The former even provide ‘training’ to the latter as northern researchers and donors are considered de-facto experts in the field. Our new partner, the Dovetail Impact Foundationunderstands the power of community voice and agency. As part of the second cohort of their Acceleration Portfolio, the foundation invests in African organizations with annual budgets under $500,000 USD who are deeply rooted in their communities, have enterprising leadership, and have ambition to grow their impact. By pairing unrestricted funding with capacity support, their goal is to help organizations lay the groundwork needed to access greater opportunities and funding. Our deep ties in Nganda and surrounding communities, puts us in a unique position to understand and have a plan for addressing community needs.

If we are to achieve the SDGs by 2030, the current approach of prescriptie monitoring & evaluation and one-sided consultations from donors, must be reevaluated to consider the diversity and nuances of each community. Those providing support cannot only rely on their metrics to define what success looks like– it must involve the community ‘being developed’ in that process. If philanthropists can restructure the power that the impacted population has in terms of how success is measured and who is invited to their board and decision-making tables, only then, will we achieve sustainability. The aid-receiving people and country must be acknowledged and centered in proposals and solutions. Success must be defined by the communities receiving funds in order to truly create long-term change