The Slow Work of Collaboration: How We Build With Local Partners, Not For Them

In international development, collaboration gets used as a buzzword. Everyone says “partner-led.” Everyone says “capacity building.” Everyone says “locally owned.”  But when you watch the work up close - week after week - the difference between supporting local leadership and directing local leadership becomes painfully clear. 

At Helping Children Worldwide (HCW), we’ve learned that the most sustainable change rarely comes from big ideas delivered quickly. It comes from patient, methodical work done with the people who will carry it long after we’re gone.  One of the clearest examples of that for us this year has been a project that, on paper, sounds simple:

Strengthen a microfinance program where repayments were starting to fall.

In practice, it looked like something else entirely: listening, investigating, researching locally relevant best practices, drafting tools with the local team, and walking word-by-word through process drafts until they felt right in the hands of the people who would use them.

It started the way real partnership starts: with their concern, not our idea

The project wasn’t born out of a Western strategy session or an outside consultant’s model.  We didn’t go to them and say “your repayment rates are low, and we know how you can fix that.”  It began because our local partners raised a concern: repayments in their microfinance program were slipping, and it was impacting their case management work in unexpected ways, and they wanted to address it before it became a bigger problem.

That matters. Because when the concern originates locally, ownership is already present. Our job isn’t to “fix it.” Our job is to support their leadership with questions, tools, and resources that help them strengthen what they’ve already built.


Step one was not solutions. It was questions. Hundreds of them.

If you’ve ever been tempted to jump straight to a “best practice” answer, this kind of work will humble you quickly.  Before we wrote a single recommendation, we asked questions—hundreds of them - about what already existed:

• What does your current SOP say?
• What are the criteria for entrance into the microfinance training program?
• How are caregivers selected, and who makes those decisions?
• What loan sizes are being offered, and why?
• What is being tracked, by whom, and how often?
• What reporting exists right now, and what’s missing?
• What happens when someone misses a payment?
• What patterns are you seeing—by community, by season, by caregiver circumstances?

We privately wrestled our own ‘great ideas’ and ‘hidden agendas’ into silence (note that this is not always easy).  We asked hundreds of questions (maybe thousands), but with truly open minds and sincere curiosity.  The goal wasn’t to interrogate. It was to understand. Because you can’t strengthen what you don’t fully see.  And it’s really hard to see from across an ocean and a culture.


Step two was diagnosing the real issue, not just the visible symptom

“Falling repayments” is a symptom. But partnership requires us to ask: what’s underneath it?

• Were the loans too large for the income reality?  Or too small?
• Was the selection criteria unclear?
• Were expectations inconsistent?
• Did caregivers experience shocks—illness, school fees, market disruptions—without any adaptation plan?
• Was tracking happening too late to intervene early?
• Were incentives and accountability structures unclear?

We worked with the local team to identify what they believed were the underlying causes - because they’re the ones closest to the caregivers, the communities, and the realities that shape repayment.

Step three was research - but not the kind that imports a Western model

​Once we understood the local team’s concerns and program structure, we brought in interns to do research on successful microfinance programs. But here was another non-negotiable: the research had to be contextualized.  Our partners weren’t interested in importing a U.S. or Western microfinance approach and pasting it onto Sierra Leone (and frankly, neither were we). We all wanted to learn from models that had proven effective in Sub-Saharan Africa—and Sierra Leone in particular - because sustainability isn’t about what looks good in theory. It’s about what works in context.

So the research was targeted:

• What models have succeeded in similar economic and cultural environments?
• What selection criteria and training approaches are common in effective programs?
• What repayment structures and tracking systems support accountability without shame?
• What safeguards help programs stay healthy over time?

Then we held that research lightly - never as a prescription, always as a resource.


Step four was drafting tools for their review—not delivering a finished product

With two streams of information in hand - (1) what we learned from the local team and (2) what the research revealed - we drafted a revised SOP and tracking forms - not as “the answer.”

As a draft.  We watermark it just to make it 100% clear that it is changeable, and that watermark stays until they tell us that they’re happy with where it is.  Because ownership doesn’t come from being handed a polished document. Ownership comes from being part of building it.

So we shared the draft back to the local team and invited critique with even more questions:

• What feels realistic?
• What feels unnecessary?
• What language needs to change?
• What steps don’t match your workflows?
• What data do you actually want to track?
• What will be too burdensome for staff?
• What will strengthen follow-up and accountability?

Step five happened in person: word-by-word work, not top-down training

In October, a team traveled to Sierra Leone - not to announce a new system, but to sit at the table and go through the documents word by word with the local team.  This is the part people don’t see when they imagine “capacity building.”  It wasn’t flashy. It was tedious.  It was painstaking. It was slow.
It looked like:

• reading the SOP line by line
• pausing for questions
• rewriting sections in real time
• clarifying intent and responsibilities
• ensuring every step matched what the local team wanted and could implement
• adjusting forms so they were actually usable in the field
• aligning language with local practice, not outside jargon

That kind of work is time-consuming. It’s truthfully a little tedious.  But it is also deeply respectful. Because it communicates: your understanding matters. Your ownership matters. This has to live in your hands, not ours. 

And then the local team did what partnership is supposed to produce: they led itBy December, the local team had a final SOP and forms to use.  They used the new criteria to identify a cohort, trained 30 caregivers, and began preparing to award loans.

They weren’t “complying with an HCW system.” They were implementing a process they helped create. And they’re excited about the new criteria and forms for a simple reason: they recognize themselves in the work.  That’s the difference between “guidance” and “support.”  We didn’t come in as experts with answers. We provided data, asked questions, organized learning, and helped translate their insights into practical tools they could own.

Why we choose the slow wayThis kind of collaboration is not fast.  It’s not efficient in the way donor culture often defines efficiency.  It’s methodical. It’s relational. It requires humility. It requires revision. It requires patience.

But we believe it honors local leadership in at least three ways:

1. It allows deep contextualization.
   Programs aren’t strengthened by importing solutions - they’re strengthened by adapting tools to real community conditions and local contexts.
2. It builds lasting capacity, not dependency.
   When local teams shape the system, they can improve it over time without waiting for outside direction.
3. It increases sustainability.
   The strongest programs are the ones the local team understands, believes in, and can carry forward.

This is what collaboration looks like when it’s real: not “we brought a model,” but “we built a process together.” And when the work is child welfare - when families and children are depending on the strength of local systems - we’re willing to do it the slow way. Because the slow way is often the way that lasts.

Author:
​Laura Horvath

Senior Technical Advisor for Global Programs
HELPING CHILDREN WORLDWIDE