Empowering local actors by prioritising local capacity and networks: Poland’s Solidarity Fund

Challenge

Based on its own transition experience, Poland’s approach to development co-operation recognises that meaningful democratic reforms require working at the local level and across society to build support and lasting change. This requires strong local networks that can work with development partners to design, manage and implement locally relevant solutions based on a genuine sense of agency.

Approach

The Solidarity Fund – a State Treasury foundation since 2011 – has the unique capacity in Polish Aid of being able to sub-grant to local partners. It works to empower local actors to play the leading role in the development of their own societies. To achieve this, the Solidarity Fund:

• Invests in country presence and local staff: Three local representative offices have been established: in Moldova in 2012 and Georgia and Ukraine in 2019. Except for country directors, these offices are staffed by nationals of the respective countries. Investment in local staff generates ownership and commitment, supports the development of local networks, and builds trust with local and central administrations.

• Supports methodologies that are local by design: In Moldova, the Solidarity Fund is a key actor in delivering the European Union’s LEADER approach to rural development. This approach relies on partnerships of local actors to actively shape rural development policies. In Ukraine, the Solidarity Fund draws where relevant on Poland’s own experience while maximising local networks to stimulate reforms in social policy, vocational education, civil protection and governance.

• Embeds local staff in partner institutions: The Solidarity Fund transfers part of its staff to work in newly created or relevant existing institutions to transfer expertise, based on local employment and salary conditions. Staff often remain in the institution, helping to embed capabilities.

• Develops a method that generates citizens’ and institutions’ co-responsibility for development processes: The Solidarity Fund’s phased methodology includes exit by design. This includes a pilot phase, involving regular dialogue with local communities, authorities and local civil society organisations; an implementation phase of building state actors’ and social partners’ project management capacities; and an institutionalisation phase, empowering local partners to influence policy making within the country’s institutional and legal framework. The embedding phase involves defining exit conditions that ensure locally developed solutions are co‑owned and managed by national counterparts.

Results

• Local partners strengthen their capacity: The National LEADER Network Moldova acquired capacity to diversify its financial resources, including from other donors and the national budget. Through urban regeneration projects, Moldovan officials also strengthened their competences in urban planning and implementing regeneration processes.

• Local authorities and actors build networks and are better able to participate in and influence national decision-making processes. In Moldova, Regional Development Agencies worked with the Ministry of Agriculture, Regional Development and Environment to develop national “Guidelines for urban regeneration”. In 2020, 13 cities involved in urban revitalisation projects supported by the Solidarity Fund founded the National Urban Revitalization Network to collectively promote sustainable urban development tools across Moldova. In Georgia, a locally established “Academy of Local Self-Governance” launched training on cross-sectoral communication and inclusive local decision making.

• National authorities buy into locally designed development instruments: Moldova became the first non-EU country to finance Local Action Groups from the state budget and to implement the LEADER programme as a public policy tool. In Ukraine, from 2024, the Ministry of Social Policy and the Ministry of Veterans Affairs will co-finance locally manged psychosocial support centres for war victims which were co‑created and piloted by local actors and the Solidarity Fund.