Enablers and Constraints to Locally Led Development: An Evaluation of USAID/Serbia's Local Works Program

USAID/Serbia successfully applied to join the Local Works program during the first round of funding in 2015. Over the course of the program, the Mission made six awards to local partners to advance democracy and governance objectives shared by USAID and local civil society. These activities have demonstrated great success in many areas: engaging citizens in advocacy work and in community-level initiatives, increasing transparency in the judicial system, effecting policy change through public-private dialogue, and boosting local philanthropy. 

This internal evaluation examines the factors that facilitated LLD processes at USAID/Serbia, and the link between these enablers and ways of working with local partners. As a Round 1 LW Mission, USAID/Serbia has been through the full program lifecycle, from applying to join LW to closing out and evaluating activities. As such, the Mission provides a useful case in examining the enablers and constraints to locally led development. 

Key evaluation questions probed the following topics:

• Factors that led the Mission to apply to the LW program
• Differences between LW and non-LW activities in design and implementation (and reasons for those differences)
• Perceived connections between activity management approaches and development outcomes 
• Reasons for the high level of staff-buy in for the LW approach
• Reasons for - and benefits of - Foreign Service National (FSN) leadership
• Interactions among the offices within the Mission 
• Working with a local Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) support contractor
• Intersection of the LW approach with political and diplomatic considerations in Serbia 
• Support from Washington to the Mission, and from the Mission to LW partners, probing the types of support that were most valued