Local ownership and community-led development: Cases from Thailand, Myanmar Tanzania, and Madagascar

In this talk, William Harnden, Managing Director, Connected Development— an NGO and international network of grassroots organisations— will present three context specific case studies of grassroots community-led development efforts from members within its network, including:

• An educational programme for refugees, economic migrants, and displaced persons along the Thai-Myanmar border, run by a director who himself has been a refugee from Chin state. 
• A sustainable microcredit and organic agriculture initiative run by farmers cooperatives in the Kagera region of Tanzania, bordering Lake Victoria, Uganda, and Rwanda. 
• A social enterprise which has a human and environmental impact in the south of Madagascar, collecting rainwater to address cyclical humanitarian crises in the country and reduce the use of disposable plastics. 

Each of these organisations has created locally appropriate solutions to humanitarian and development challenges, and William will present the models used by each from recent site visits to all three locations at the end of 2023.

Speaker

William Harnden is a former student at the University of York William has worked in international development for the past 15 years. He has worked within the UN system, International NGOs, and the UK charity sector. In 2019 he launched Connected Development to strengthen cooperation and to promote the undervalued work of local development actors within the sector. William has lived in Timor-Leste and Thailand for half of his career and regularly travels to the field to meet local and international humanitarian and development agencies.