Strengthening Locally Led Development: A Mutual Learning Journey for GOAL, Irish Aid and Local Partners

While the GPC is often recognised for its leadership coaching, organisational development, and partner support, the visits also illuminated another critical contribution: the use of systems analysis to generate evidence, guide decision-making, and strengthen locally led action across GOAL’s global network.

Putting Local Organisations and Leaders at the Centre

Throughout the visits, the Irish Aid delegation engaged with GPC leadership and a wide array of partners to better understand how GOAL nurtures leadership and builds organisational confidence. With more than 190 partners across GOAL’s global footprint, including civil society organisations, agribusiness actors, farmer cooperatives, local enterprises, and other private-sector players, the GPC plays a central role in shifting power closer to communities. Its approach strengthens governance, supports leadership growth, and enables organisations to manage and steer their own development pathways.

Critically, the visits also reinforced how GPC contributes to GOAL’s country programmes more broadly, embedding a systems lens that ensures interventions across all sectors including markets and private-sector systems are strategic, sustainable, and community-owned.

Transforming Local Organisations Through Insight and Leadership

Partners shared how GPC investments from coaching and mentoring to organisational development have helped them evolve into stronger leaders within their communities and markets. These transformations are amplified when paired with systems insights generated across GOAL country programmes. Leaders from civil society, local enterprises, and cooperatives reported feeling more equipped to:

• interpret and use data for decision-making,
• respond more effectively to community and market needs,
• design context-appropriate and market-relevant solutions, and
• advocate confidently with government, private-sector networks, and other stakeholders.

Partners emphasised that GPC’s support goes well beyond technical training. It builds internal systems, strengthens accountability structures, and equips organisations including private-sector partners to grow, adapt, and lead within their respective environments. The GPC acts as a bridge, connecting country-level systems evidence with partner-level capacity, enabling local organisations not just to participate in development, but to influence and shape it.

As one partner put it: “GPC isn’t just building our skills; it’s strengthening our understanding of the environment we work in. That’s what makes us better leaders.”

How Systems Thinking Strengthens Local Action

While the focus of the visits was on local leadership and organisational strengthening, Irish Aid also learned how GOAL’s holistic systems approach brings together a full spectrum of actors. Presentations by GOAL teams from Ethiopia, Uganda, Syria, and Honduras highlighted the breadth of partnerships from community groups and local government to market actors, SMEs, financial service providers, and larger private-sector firms.

A field visit to Agago and Bugiri provided a real-time demonstration of this integrated approach. The monitoring team saw how deep engagement with local government, CSOs, and private-sector actors such as agro-dealers, market vendors, and small enterprises helps drive sustainable local solutions that are both market-informed and community-owned.

This systems approach helps partners:

• identify root causes of challenges rather than symptoms,
• collaborate across sectors, including public–private collaboration more effectively,
• align with government systems and market dynamics, and
• design interventions that are sustainable, adaptable, and led by local actors.

By combining local leadership with systems insight, GOAL empowers partners not only to participate in development but to shape, influence, and sustain change within their communities and markets.

Practical Tools That Strengthen Organisations

The Irish Aid team also reviewed the GPC’s suite of institutional strengthening tools, including:

• the Organisational Development Framework and Capacity Assessment Toolkit
• a Learning Brief summarising lessons from GOAL’s work with CSOs
• the Partnership Information Management System (PIMS)
• Safeguarding and Institutional Fundraising Toolkits for Partners

These tools support diverse actors’ civil society, private sector, and community organisations alike to improve governance, programme quality, and decision-making using real-time systems insights. Partners described them as practical, intuitive, and essential for building long-term resilience.

A Partnership Anchored in Trust and Shared Learning

For GOAL’s partners, the visit reaffirmed that their leadership, expertise, and lived experience remain central to the organisation’s mission whether they are community leaders, local enterprises, or civil society organisations.

As one partner shared: “GPC isn’t just building our skills; it’s strengthening our understanding of the system we work in. That’s what makes us better leaders.”

For the GPC team, the visit underscored the importance of evidence-driven systems analysis in shaping more effective, equitable, and sustainable programming.

“GOAL has always rooted its work in communities, but today there is an even stronger focus on enabling local partners to drive lasting change, “says Robert Katende, GPC Systems Analysis & Design Advisor.

“We are equipping partners with the tools, confidence, and leadership they need to shape their own development pathways.”

Looking Ahead

As GOAL continues to expand its partnerships across Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America, the Global Partnership Centre will remain a hub of learning, innovation, and support. The commitment is clear: to ensure that local organisations including civil society, private-sector enterprises, government institutions, academic partners, and community structures have the skills, evidence, and leadership foundations to drive effective, sustainable, and locally led change.