GFO Issue 464, Article Number: 6
ABSTRACT
This article is a brief summary of the evaluation of community engagement in the Global Fund grant life cycle final report which was presented at Global Fund Strategy Committee meeting held in Geneva.
Introduction
At a time when global health programs face unprecedented financial pressure, a newly released independent evaluation addresses a critical question: How effectively are communities affected by HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria engaged in decisions about the programs designed to serve them?
The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria's Evaluation and Learning Office (ELO) recently published an evaluation examining community engagement (CE) throughout the grant lifecycle. The findings present a mixed picture: significant progress in some areas, persistent gaps in others. With funding cuts threatening the foundations of international health efforts, the report emphasizes a key takeaway: the lived experiences of affected communities must guide the future of health programming.
In a global funding landscape characterized by donor fatigue and shrinking budgets, the Global Fund stands at a pivotal moment. The evaluation underscores that those most impacted by HIV, TB, and malaria must have a central voice in shaping the responses.
Commissioned by the ELO and overseen by the Independent Evaluation Panel (IEP), the evaluation sought to understand where, how, and why CE succeeds or falls short across the grant cycle. Drawing on over a year of research, including case studies in ten countries and deep dives in Cameroon and Cambodia, the report proposes strategies for enhancing CE and presents a roadmap for more inclusive, transparent, and impactful engagement.
Figure 1. Roadmap illustration
Background and context
Community engagement is a core pillar of the Global Fund’s 2023–2028 strategy. It refers to the active and meaningful involvement of communities most affected by disease in decisions that impact their lives. Far from being a moral obligation alone, CE is a strategic necessity: evidence shows that community-led interventions produce better health outcomes and more sustainable programming.
Despite this, the evaluation reveals that applying this principle consistently throughout the grant cycle - from funding request to implementation - remains a challenge. While CE during the funding request phase has matured, engagement in the subsequent grant-making and implementation stages remains limited or symbolic.
This challenge is set against a backdrop of increasing financial uncertainty, with major bilateral donors scaling back support. In this context, ensuring responsive, locally grounded, and efficient health programs is more urgent than ever.
The evaluation approach
As previously mentioned, the evaluation was commissioned under the oversight of the independent evaluation panel. The review explores whether the Global Fund’s 2023–2028 strategy is fulfilling its promise to "maximize the engagement and leadership of the most affected communities."
The evaluation used a theory-based, realist-inspired methodology to explore what works, for whom, under what conditions, and why. Rather than relying on traditional outcome metrics, it used context–mechanism–outcome (CMO) configurations to examine how specific interventions unfold in diverse settings.
Ten countries were selected for in-depth case studies: Cambodia, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, Ecuador, Ghana, Indonesia, Tajikistan, Ukraine, and Zimbabwe. Cambodia and Cameroon underwent further study through »deep dives."
Figure 2. Approach model
Key evaluation questions:
- How far is the Global Fund achieving meaningful community engagement outcomes?
- What causes variation in community engagement across countries and diseases?
The evaluation integrated literature reviews, stakeholder interviews, and community focus groups to triangulate data and assess what is happening and how it is perceived and experienced by those involved.
The evaluation centered on three grant cycle stages:
1. Funding request
2. Grant making
3. Implementation
Evaluation Key findings
- Stage 1: Funding request
The funding request stage emerged as the point in the grant cycle where community engagement was most consistently meaningful across all ten case study countries. Even in challenging environments, such as conflict-affected areas or those with restricted civic space, strong participation from communities and key populations (KPs) was observed.
Findings
- All countries demonstrated active CE, particularly through consultations, pre-dialogue sessions, and contributions to technical writing. The “annex of funding priorities of civil society and communities most affected” proved to be an effective tool for integrating community voices.
- Community-led organizations (CLOs), KPs, and civil society groups played crucial roles in shaping proposals, especially for HIV, where CE was the strongest.
- This engagement was often supported by technical assistance (TA) and coordination among partners, which helped structure and amplify community inputs.
Examples of Funding in Various Countries
- Cambodia: the pre-country joint HIV-TB dialogue facilitated inclusive participation from marginalized groups for example people who use drugs, sex workers, transgender people, helping to integrate community priorities into the funding request.
- Chad: the decentralized local dialogues, led by youth and women’s groups, enabled safe-space consultations. Civil society actors educated peers about the Global Fund and gathered priorities from grassroots levels.
- Tajikistan: NGOs utilized TA to mobilize community input and ensure that their priorities were included in the national application.
- Ecuador: Digital platforms like WhatsApp and Zoom engaged remote and stigmatized populations.
- Zimbabwe: KP groups organized capacity-building workshops to prepare for broader country dialogue sessions.
- In countries like Ghana, Zimbabwe, and Cameroon, TA from UNAIDS helped enhance CE.
- In the Central African Republic (CAR), consultations covered all three diseases, with community leadership notably stronger for HIV compared to TB or malaria.
Limitations in the drafting stage
- Despite strong early engagement, community priorities were sometimes excluded during the costing and intervention selection phases, often without explanation.
- In several cases, government agencies and technical teams prioritized commodities or public-sector interventions, sidelining community-identified needs.
- For example, in one country, despite TB-related issues being linked to poor grant performance (e.g., stigmatization, lack of decentralization, insufficient support), proposed interventions were not reflected in the final funding request.
The evaluation noted that even within this stage, the drafting process sometimes diluted community inputs. Priorities were occasionally excluded without explanation, undermining the trust built during earlier consultations.
Notably, TB and malaria-affected communities experienced weaker engagement. TB groups were more involved where TA was available, while malaria-affected populations remained largely excluded, partly due to weaker organizational representation.
- Stage 2: Grant Making
While the funding request stage showcased community engagement at its best, the grant-making stage revealed its weakest link and emerged as the most problematic.
Key Findings
- Communities and key populations (KPs) were largely excluded from decisions during grant making, which became dominated by principal recipients (PRs), country teams (CTs), and a few CCM members.
- In most countries, feedback loops failed, and CCM representatives lacked the technical capacity or influence to advocate for community priorities.
- Decisions especially regarding budgeting and intervention selection were often made behind closed doors, with minimal explanation or justification.
- There was a mismatch between communities’ expectations and the actual funding decisions. While communities proposed priorities and interventions during funding request processes, many were excluded or moved to non-guaranteed “Priority Above Allocation Requests” (PAAR) during grant making.
- This led to widespread disappointment, particularly in countries like Chad, Tajikistan, and Ghana, where community-led proposals were sidelined despite strong engagement during earlier stages.
- Communities felt overshadowed by government agencies and international partners, who were perceived to hold greater influence over funding decisions.
- Technical complexity and lack of information-sharing further limited community participation.
- In Chad, fear of government retaliation discouraged communities from advocating for a community-led PR, despite the Global Fund’s emphasis on civil society engagement.
The grant-making stage represented a critical weakness in the Global Fund’s commitment to community engagement. Despite strong CE during the funding request phase, most countries failed to sustain inclusive practices, undermining community priorities and damaging trust. The lack of transparency, unequal power dynamics, and exclusion from final decision-making not only diminished the impact of earlier CE efforts but also discouraged future participation from affected communities and KPs. Addressing these gaps is essential for more equitable, responsive, and accountable grant processes.
- Stage 3: Implementation
Community engagement during the implementation stage showed mixed results. While some countries made meaningful progress through structured mechanisms and adaptive innovations, others struggled with limited, inconsistent, or tokenistic involvement of communities and key populations (KPs).
In most countries, CE was primarily channeled through oversight mechanisms such as: CCM, community-led monitoring (CLM) and technical working groups (TWGs)
In countries where CCM leadership was strong, diverse, and accountable, communities had a greater ability to influence implementation outcomes. For example:
- In Indonesia and Zimbabwe, joint oversight visits involving communities helped identify and collaboratively resolve implementation challenges.
- In Ghana, sustained advocacy led to the repurposing of funds for HIV self-testing, demonstrating the power of engaged communities during implementation.
CLM emerged as a critical tool not only for tracking program performance but also for building capacity and maintaining institutional memory essential for sustained CE across grant cycles.
Despite the potential for mid-course corrections, programmatic revisions rarely included meaningful CE:
- Communities were often excluded from early discussions and were only brought in to endorse decisions already made by principal recipients (PRs) and Global Fund country teams (CTs).
- Short timelines and technical complexity further limited opportunities for community input.
- A notable exception was Zimbabwe, where communities directly proposed and shaped pilot interventions for transgender individuals and people who use drugs, which were later scaled up in subsequent grant cycles.
This limited involvement created a disconnect between early engagement during the funding request stage and long-term program ownership.
There are some countries that have introduced innovative strategies to maintain engagement amid external disruptions:
- Ecuador leveraged digital outreach to connect with communities during the pandemic.
- Indonesia adopted decentralized planning to engage remote populations more effectively.
These examples demonstrate how flexibility and innovation can enhance CE during implementation, particularly in contexts affected by crises or logistical barriers.
The evaluation highlighted uneven CE across diseases:
- HIV communities consistently demonstrated the highest engagement, buoyed by strong civil society organizations and global advocacy networks.
- TB communities participated meaningfully where capacity-building investments had been made.
- Malaria-affected communities generally lacked organized representation and had limited influence on program design or oversight.
Despite efforts, marginalized groups such as adolescents, refugees, sex workers, and transgender individuals continue to face entrenched legal, social, and structural barriers to participation:
- Representation in decision-making forums remained patchy and inconsistent.
- Within CCMs and KPs, power imbalances favored larger, well-established CSOs, often at the expense of newer or more vulnerable groups.
Even when CCMs were formally updated to include KPs and people with disabilities, the effectiveness of participation varied greatly depending on context and leadership.
What Shapes Success?
Three factors emerged as the most critical for successful CE:
- Strong civil society and community leadership: countries with vibrant CLOs and visible KP networks achieved deeper and broader engagement.
- Proactive, balanced CCMs: inclusive and transparent governance bodies ensured greater equity in decision-making.
- Timely and tailored TA: when provided early and extended into grant making, TA helped communities articulate priorities, navigate technical requirements, and participate meaningfully.
Conversely, legal barriers, social stigma, and restrictive civic spaces hindered CE, particularly for marginalized groups such as sex workers, people who use drugs, and LGBTQ+ populations.
The evaluation reveals two distinct realities.
The evaluation concludes that while the Global Fund has made significant progress in embedding CE especially at the start of the grant cycle glaring disparities remain. The “front-loaded” model, where engagement peaks early but fades during execution, risks disillusioning communities and undermining long-term impact.
It also warns of unequal CE across diseases. HIV-affected communities benefit from years of mobilization and investment; malaria and TB communities lag behind, often due to weaker organizing structures and fewer allies.
The evaluation calls for a more balanced and continuous CE approach, grounded in power analysis, tailored to context, and supported by clearer processes and accountability mechanisms.
Recommendations
The Evaluation team developed nine key recommendations to improve meaningful community engagement throughout the Global Fund grant cycle. These are aligned with three stages of the grant cycle: funding request, grant making, and implementation. The recommendations are aimed at enhancing inclusion, transparency, and responsiveness without requiring major new investments.
Recommendations for stage 1: funding request
Despite good CE performance at this stage, two recommendations were proposed for further improvement:
- Update CE Guidance for National Strategic Plans by revising guidelines to strengthen CE in mid-term reviews of national strategic plans and funding requests and emphasizing documenting community responses and aligning CCM plans with national funding roadmaps.
- Improve TA Planning and Delivery by ensuring TA for CE and systems strengthening is continuous across funding request and grant-making stages and involving communities in TA planning and consultant selection.
- Strengthen CSO Feedback Loops via CCM Members by making it a requirement for civil society CCM (CS CCM) members to provide regular feedback to constituencies about what was included/excluded in the funding request and reducing misinformation and increase trust.
Recommendations for stage 2: grant making
This stage offers the highest impact opportunity to improve CE with minimal investment:
- Increase Transparency in Grant Making by developing clear guidance for communities on how to engage and requiring PRs and CTs to explain what priorities were included/excluded and why.
- Clarify Roles and Shift Focus to CE Outcomes by revising CE guidance to articulate CT responsibilities and shift focus from number of meetings to outcomes and involving technical community representatives, not just CCM members, in key decisions.
Recommendations for stage 3: implementation
CE during implementation is uneven. Three recommendations aim to improve oversight and adaptation
- Leverage Community-Led Monitoring (CLM) by integrating CLM with community systems strengthening (CSS) to build long-term CE and learning capacity without major new costs.
- Strengthen Oversight through CCM Evolution by building on the CCM Evolution initiative to reinforce oversight and performance reviews with a focus on CE and ethics.
- Enhance CE in Programmatic Revisions by updating guidance to ensure CSOs and communities are engaged in grant revisions and reduce revisions that occur without CCM involvement.
- Conduct Power Analysis to Inform CE Strategy by assessing power dynamics and civic space barriers in each country to identify underrepresented groups and tailor CE strategies accordingly and integrating this into existing national assessments to avoid additional costs.
Introduction
At a time when global health programs face unprecedented financial pressure, a newly released independent evaluation addresses a critical question: How effectively are communities affected by HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria engaged in decisions about the programs designed to serve them?
The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria's Evaluation and Learning Office (ELO) recently published an evaluation examining community engagement (CE) throughout the grant lifecycle. The findings present a mixed picture: significant progress in some areas, persistent gaps in others. With funding cuts threatening the foundations of international health efforts, the report emphasizes a key takeaway: the lived experiences of affected communities must guide the future of health programming.
In a global funding landscape characterized by donor fatigue and shrinking budgets, the Global Fund stands at a pivotal moment. The evaluation underscores that those most impacted by HIV, TB, and malaria must have a central voice in shaping the responses.
Commissioned by the ELO and overseen by the Independent Evaluation Panel (IEP), the evaluation sought to understand where, how, and why CE succeeds or falls short across the grant cycle. Drawing on over a year of research, including case studies in ten countries and deep dives in Cameroon and Cambodia, the report proposes strategies for enhancing CE and presents a roadmap for more inclusive, transparent, and impactful engagement.
Figure 1. Roadmap illustration
Background and context
Community engagement is a core pillar of the Global Fund’s 2023–2028 strategy. It refers to the active and meaningful involvement of communities most affected by disease in decisions that impact their lives. Far from being a moral obligation alone, CE is a strategic necessity: evidence shows that community-led interventions produce better health outcomes and more sustainable programming.
Despite this, the evaluation reveals that applying this principle consistently throughout the grant cycle - from funding request to implementation - remains a challenge. While CE during the funding request phase has matured, engagement in the subsequent grant-making and implementation stages remains limited or symbolic.
This challenge is set against a backdrop of increasing financial uncertainty, with major bilateral donors scaling back support. In this context, ensuring responsive, locally grounded, and efficient health programs is more urgent than ever.
The evaluation approach
As previously mentioned, the evaluation was commissioned under the oversight of the independent evaluation panel. The review explores whether the Global Fund’s 2023–2028 strategy is fulfilling its promise to "maximize the engagement and leadership of the most affected communities."
The evaluation used a theory-based, realist-inspired methodology to explore what works, for whom, under what conditions, and why. Rather than relying on traditional outcome metrics, it used context–mechanism–outcome (CMO) configurations to examine how specific interventions unfold in diverse settings.
Ten countries were selected for in-depth case studies: Cambodia, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, Ecuador, Ghana, Indonesia, Tajikistan, Ukraine, and Zimbabwe. Cambodia and Cameroon underwent further study through »deep dives."
Figure 2. Approach model
Key evaluation questions:
- How far is the Global Fund achieving meaningful community engagement outcomes?
- What causes variation in community engagement across countries and diseases?
The evaluation integrated literature reviews, stakeholder interviews, and community focus groups to triangulate data and assess what is happening and how it is perceived and experienced by those involved.
The evaluation centered on three grant cycle stages:
1. Funding request
2. Grant making
3. Implementation
Evaluation Key findings
- Stage 1: Funding request
The funding request stage emerged as the point in the grant cycle where community engagement was most consistently meaningful across all ten case study countries. Even in challenging environments, such as conflict-affected areas or those with restricted civic space, strong participation from communities and key populations (KPs) was observed.
Findings
- All countries demonstrated active CE, particularly through consultations, pre-dialogue sessions, and contributions to technical writing. The “annex of funding priorities of civil society and communities most affected” proved to be an effective tool for integrating community voices.
- Community-led organizations (CLOs), KPs, and civil society groups played crucial roles in shaping proposals, especially for HIV, where CE was the strongest.
- This engagement was often supported by technical assistance (TA) and coordination among partners, which helped structure and amplify community inputs.
Examples of Funding in Various Countries
- Cambodia: the pre-country joint HIV-TB dialogue facilitated inclusive participation from marginalized groups for example people who use drugs, sex workers, transgender people, helping to integrate community priorities into the funding request.
- Chad: the decentralized local dialogues, led by youth and women’s groups, enabled safe-space consultations. Civil society actors educated peers about the Global Fund and gathered priorities from grassroots levels.
- Tajikistan: NGOs utilized TA to mobilize community input and ensure that their priorities were included in the national application.
- Ecuador: Digital platforms like WhatsApp and Zoom engaged remote and stigmatized populations.
- Zimbabwe: KP groups organized capacity-building workshops to prepare for broader country dialogue sessions.
- In countries like Ghana, Zimbabwe, and Cameroon, TA from UNAIDS helped enhance CE.
- In the Central African Republic (CAR), consultations covered all three diseases, with community leadership notably stronger for HIV compared to TB or malaria.
Limitations in the drafting stage
- Despite strong early engagement, community priorities were sometimes excluded during the costing and intervention selection phases, often without explanation.
- In several cases, government agencies and technical teams prioritized commodities or public-sector interventions, sidelining community-identified needs.
- For example, in one country, despite TB-related issues being linked to poor grant performance (e.g., stigmatization, lack of decentralization, insufficient support), proposed interventions were not reflected in the final funding request.
The evaluation noted that even within this stage, the drafting process sometimes diluted community inputs. Priorities were occasionally excluded without explanation, undermining the trust built during earlier consultations.
Notably, TB and malaria-affected communities experienced weaker engagement. TB groups were more involved where TA was available, while malaria-affected populations remained largely excluded, partly due to weaker organizational representation.
- Stage 2: Grant Making
While the funding request stage showcased community engagement at its best, the grant-making stage revealed its weakest link and emerged as the most problematic.
Key Findings
- Communities and key populations (KPs) were largely excluded from decisions during grant making, which became dominated by principal recipients (PRs), country teams (CTs), and a few CCM members.
- In most countries, feedback loops failed, and CCM representatives lacked the technical capacity or influence to advocate for community priorities.
- Decisions especially regarding budgeting and intervention selection were often made behind closed doors, with minimal explanation or justification.
- There was a mismatch between communities’ expectations and the actual funding decisions. While communities proposed priorities and interventions during funding request processes, many were excluded or moved to non-guaranteed “Priority Above Allocation Requests” (PAAR) during grant making.
- This led to widespread disappointment, particularly in countries like Chad, Tajikistan, and Ghana, where community-led proposals were sidelined despite strong engagement during earlier stages.
- Communities felt overshadowed by government agencies and international partners, who were perceived to hold greater influence over funding decisions.
- Technical complexity and lack of information-sharing further limited community participation.
- In Chad, fear of government retaliation discouraged communities from advocating for a community-led PR, despite the Global Fund’s emphasis on civil society engagement.
The grant-making stage represented a critical weakness in the Global Fund’s commitment to community engagement. Despite strong CE during the funding request phase, most countries failed to sustain inclusive practices, undermining community priorities and damaging trust. The lack of transparency, unequal power dynamics, and exclusion from final decision-making not only diminished the impact of earlier CE efforts but also discouraged future participation from affected communities and KPs. Addressing these gaps is essential for more equitable, responsive, and accountable grant processes.
- Stage 3: Implementation
Community engagement during the implementation stage showed mixed results. While some countries made meaningful progress through structured mechanisms and adaptive innovations, others struggled with limited, inconsistent, or tokenistic involvement of communities and key populations (KPs).
In most countries, CE was primarily channeled through oversight mechanisms such as: CCM, community-led monitoring (CLM) and technical working groups (TWGs)
In countries where CCM leadership was strong, diverse, and accountable, communities had a greater ability to influence implementation outcomes. For example:
- In Indonesia and Zimbabwe, joint oversight visits involving communities helped identify and collaboratively resolve implementation challenges.
- In Ghana, sustained advocacy led to the repurposing of funds for HIV self-testing, demonstrating the power of engaged communities during implementation.
CLM emerged as a critical tool not only for tracking program performance but also for building capacity and maintaining institutional memory essential for sustained CE across grant cycles.
Despite the potential for mid-course corrections, programmatic revisions rarely included meaningful CE:
- Communities were often excluded from early discussions and were only brought in to endorse decisions already made by principal recipients (PRs) and Global Fund country teams (CTs).
- Short timelines and technical complexity further limited opportunities for community input.
- A notable exception was Zimbabwe, where communities directly proposed and shaped pilot interventions for transgender individuals and people who use drugs, which were later scaled up in subsequent grant cycles.
This limited involvement created a disconnect between early engagement during the funding request stage and long-term program ownership.
There are some countries that have introduced innovative strategies to maintain engagement amid external disruptions:
- Ecuador leveraged digital outreach to connect with communities during the pandemic.
- Indonesia adopted decentralized planning to engage remote populations more effectively.
These examples demonstrate how flexibility and innovation can enhance CE during implementation, particularly in contexts affected by crises or logistical barriers.
The evaluation highlighted uneven CE across diseases:
- HIV communities consistently demonstrated the highest engagement, buoyed by strong civil society organizations and global advocacy networks.
- TB communities participated meaningfully where capacity-building investments had been made.
- Malaria-affected communities generally lacked organized representation and had limited influence on program design or oversight.
Despite efforts, marginalized groups such as adolescents, refugees, sex workers, and transgender individuals continue to face entrenched legal, social, and structural barriers to participation:
- Representation in decision-making forums remained patchy and inconsistent.
- Within CCMs and KPs, power imbalances favored larger, well-established CSOs, often at the expense of newer or more vulnerable groups.
Even when CCMs were formally updated to include KPs and people with disabilities, the effectiveness of participation varied greatly depending on context and leadership.
What Shapes Success?
Three factors emerged as the most critical for successful CE:
- Strong civil society and community leadership: countries with vibrant CLOs and visible KP networks achieved deeper and broader engagement.
- Proactive, balanced CCMs: inclusive and transparent governance bodies ensured greater equity in decision-making.
- Timely and tailored TA: when provided early and extended into grant making, TA helped communities articulate priorities, navigate technical requirements, and participate meaningfully.
Conversely, legal barriers, social stigma, and restrictive civic spaces hindered CE, particularly for marginalized groups such as sex workers, people who use drugs, and LGBTQ+ populations.
The evaluation reveals two distinct realities.
The evaluation concludes that while the Global Fund has made significant progress in embedding CE especially at the start of the grant cycle glaring disparities remain. The “front-loaded” model, where engagement peaks early but fades during execution, risks disillusioning communities and undermining long-term impact.
It also warns of unequal CE across diseases. HIV-affected communities benefit from years of mobilization and investment; malaria and TB communities lag behind, often due to weaker organizing structures and fewer allies.
The evaluation calls for a more balanced and continuous CE approach, grounded in power analysis, tailored to context, and supported by clearer processes and accountability mechanisms.
Recommendations
The Evaluation team developed nine key recommendations to improve meaningful community engagement throughout the Global Fund grant cycle. These are aligned with three stages of the grant cycle: funding request, grant making, and implementation. The recommendations are aimed at enhancing inclusion, transparency, and responsiveness without requiring major new investments.
Recommendations for stage 1: funding request
Despite good CE performance at this stage, two recommendations were proposed for further improvement:
- Update CE Guidance for National Strategic Plans by revising guidelines to strengthen CE in mid-term reviews of national strategic plans and funding requests and emphasizing documenting community responses and aligning CCM plans with national funding roadmaps.
- Improve TA Planning and Delivery by ensuring TA for CE and systems strengthening is continuous across funding request and grant-making stages and involving communities in TA planning and consultant selection.
- Strengthen CSO Feedback Loops via CCM Members by making it a requirement for civil society CCM (CS CCM) members to provide regular feedback to constituencies about what was included/excluded in the funding request and reducing misinformation and increase trust.
Recommendations for stage 2: grant making
This stage offers the highest impact opportunity to improve CE with minimal investment:
- Increase Transparency in Grant Making by developing clear guidance for communities on how to engage and requiring PRs and CTs to explain what priorities were included/excluded and why.
- Clarify Roles and Shift Focus to CE Outcomes by revising CE guidance to articulate CT responsibilities and shift focus from number of meetings to outcomes and involving technical community representatives, not just CCM members, in key decisions.
Recommendations for stage 3: implementation
CE during implementation is uneven. Three recommendations aim to improve oversight and adaptation
- Leverage Community-Led Monitoring (CLM) by integrating CLM with community systems strengthening (CSS) to build long-term CE and learning capacity without major new costs.
- Strengthen Oversight through CCM Evolution by building on the CCM Evolution initiative to reinforce oversight and performance reviews with a focus on CE and ethics.
- Enhance CE in Programmatic Revisions by updating guidance to ensure CSOs and communities are engaged in grant revisions and reduce revisions that occur without CCM involvement.
- Conduct Power Analysis to Inform CE Strategy by assessing power dynamics and civic space barriers in each country to identify underrepresented groups and tailor CE strategies accordingly and integrating this into existing national assessments to avoid additional costs.
