This was originally published by Alliance Magazine and is reproduced here with permission.
On 18 March, ahead of the Global Philanthropy Leaders Summit 2026, I participated in the ‘Field Immersions to Asombrosa,’ a resilience-focused retreat in the hills of Petaluma, California. It was a new starting point that allowed participants to reflect on how we sustain development.
Through guided conversations, the retreat focused on sustaining resilience in high-stakes work and creating space for intentional conversations that inspire collaboration and more thoughtful approaches to meaningful social change. Six principles coalesced from these exchanges: collaboration, connection, communication, clarity, continuity, and confidence.
Those reflections carried into the summit itself. One session that particularly stood out for me was ‘Reimagining development: Power, pathways, and locally-led leadership.’ It reinforced something we hear often but do not always act on: local communities understand their realities best and should be central to shaping their own development pathways.
At the same time, the discussion was honest about the gap between commitment and practice. Locally led development is widely endorsed, yet structural barriers—including funding models, institutional incentives, and entrenched mindsets—continue to limit what this looks like in reality.
What was striking was the need to rethink how we see roles within the system. The Global South is still too often positioned as a site of implementation, rather than a source of knowledge, leadership, and innovation.
This is where the conversation felt particularly grounded for me. In my experience, development becomes more effective when evidence, policy engagement, and programme design are shaped by those closest to the issues. Across the Global South, efforts to strengthen evidence-informed policymaking show that when locally led research is developed in close engagement with policymakers, it is more likely to influence decisions. More importantly, this approach supports systems change by addressing the structural barriers that often separate research from policymaking, strengthening the capacities of both research institutions and government actors, and fostering more collaborative and responsive frameworks for decision-making.
This is something we are actively advancing at the Partnership for Economic Policy (PEP), where our approach focuses on enabling locally led, evidence-informed policymaking through co-production, capacity strengthening, and sustained collaboration between researchers and decision-makers.
Another session, ‘Who gets to belong: Story, land, and the architecture of power,’ added an important layer to this broader conversation. It challenged us to think about development not only in terms of systems and resources but also in terms of narratives: who defines the problem, whose knowledge is recognised, and whose perspectives shape the future.
When local researchers, policymakers, and communities actively shape both the questions and the solutions, development becomes more grounded and more inclusive. This aligns closely with PEP’s co-production approach, where locally led research is developed in close engagement with the intended users. Taken together, these moments point to a broader shift in how development is being understood and practised.
For me, the takeaway is clear: advancing evidence-informed development requires local leadership. This means investing in local institutions, strengthening collaboration, and building trust in local expertise, while also ensuring that evidence is more directly connected to decision-making so that insights translate into action. These reflections reinforce key lessons from the 2025 Global Philanthropy Leaders Summit, particularly the importance of communities as the foundation for sustainable impact, and the value of strategic and intentional partnerships in reducing risks, especially in the face of global disruptions.
Reflecting on the summit as a whole, I was reminded that our work in development is not linear. It requires patience, partnership, and the ability to adapt. When it is rooted in local realities and shaped by those closest to the challenges, it is more likely to deliver lasting change.
