CEDPA’s approach emerged from 30 years of work to advance international development. It ensures that energetic, committed local leaders have the practical skills to mobilize communities around issues of common concern, the ability to leverage organizational resources, and tenacity to build coalitions to achieve change.

Our approach involves three inter-related strategies:

We train women leaders.
CEDPA seeks to unleash the leadership potential of women. Our appreciative training approach focuses not only on building core competencies, but also on building confidence. Participants leave our programs describing the experience as life changing. These women return to their communities where their voices and concerns can be raised to influence decisions about budget priorities and appropriation, the type and quality of healthcare services, and the placement of schools and other social services.

We partner to strengthen local institutions.
CEDPA supports and partners with organizations in country, particularly those that promote women and women’s networks. We do this by supporting local organizations through training programs in organizational management, on-site technical assistance, and small grants. Our goal is to build sustainable organizations and networks that can respond most effectively and responsibly to community needs over time.

We mobilize and advocate for policy, social norm and behavior change that supports social development.
CEDPA mobilizes women, men and youth as advocates to achieve a major shift in global priorities related to education, health and development. This experience now informs our social mobilization and advocacy approach in other sectors. CEDPA brings networks and coalitions together to create social support for issues of concern to them. Effective social mobilization approaches use community events to attract the attention of policymakers, community members and media representatives to change policy and social norms.