For Development Professionals:

Sector: Community Mobilization

Photo: Miguel Samper for Mercy Corps

Communities in which Mercy Corps works have often been disempowered for decades due to chronic poverty, bad governance, protracted conflict or instability. In other contexts, communities have recently experienced a major shock that overturned social and economic systems and people find themselves in an unfamiliar new reality. Involving community members in a way that promotes their ownership over decision-making and builds the knowledge and skills to carry out those decisions is a complex task. Yet Mercy Corps’ experience leads us to believe that it is an essential component of supporting rapid recovery and lasting change. Empowering people to be their own agents of change is the underlying goal of ‘community mobilization.’

In recognition that community mobilization is integral to the success of lasting recovery and development program impacts, Mercy Corps currently operates upwards of 50 projects with major community mobilization components in over 30 countries worth approximately $300 million dollars.

Mercy Corps believes that a community-led initiative is one that originates from and is managed by community members. Mercy Corps, as the catalyst, is wholly accountable to that community in order to achieve their vision. Community mobilization is the process of building community capacity to self-identify priorities, resources, needs and solutions in such a way as to promote representative participation, good governance, accountability and peaceful change.

From Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, and across sectors like health, natural resource management and peacebuilding, Mercy Corps applies community mobilization approaches to facilitate the process of citizens organizing for positive social change. Sustained mobilization takes place when communities remain active and empowered after the program ends. Final evaluations from a decade of implementation experience and post-program research help us understand the community-level transformation and what changes last.

To learn how we help people leverage the benefits of community mobilization, take a look at the following information: