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2021-2025

Strategic Plan

About IAP

What if development were designed and lived by the same people?

We imagine they would likely use their first-hand experience to create the maximum benefits for those who need it most and prevent any harm.

IAP is an international human and environmental rights organization that works with communities, civil society and social movements to change how today’s development is done.

IAP is part of a global movement, rooted in the aspirations of people for justice and to thrive today and tomorrow. Efforts to shift today’s development from its current focus on political and business interests to community-led priorities is a response to the unwanted and harmful projects that uproot people, end livelihoods and erase culture. It is a response to a power imbalance that, if redirected to community-led priorities, would improve lives and protect the environment.

The priorities of communities should lead every development process. Our Community Action Guides prepare community organizers around the world to collect local knowledge, inform and mobilize for the development they want. The Global Advocacy Team brings together community organizers to unite their local knowledge for a collective international campaign.

People are excluded from decisions that impact their lives and environment. IAP creates new accessible technology to maximize the use of both public and locally generated data to reinforce community mobilization. Through the Early Warning System, IAP and our partners exchange the newest information on proposed projects from development banks with community-led research on how the project would affect them ideally before project funding has been decided. IAP identifies influential decision- making spaces at governments, development finance institutions and companies for communities to advance their priorities and protect human and environmental rights.

Vision

IAP works for a world in which communities lead development where they live, work and play. In contrast to current practice, IAP advocates for a development process in which people claim and uphold their rights, the environment is respected, and all are able to live with dignity and thrive on the land they love.

Mission

IAP works in solidarity with communities, civil society and social movements to inform and amplify their campaigns, broaden access to information, and create spaces within and outside dominant power systems for communities to lead the development decisions that affect their lives and environment.

Goals

Redistribute power to increase access, capacity and participation for community-led development.
Reinforce the actions of communities, civil society and social movements to hold governments, institutions and companies account able to human and environmental rights.
Change the rules and practice of today’s prevailing top-down development model to prioritize the visions of communities.

Values

Integrity
We approach our work and our partnerships with respect, and a commitment to truth and authenticity. We recognize the expertise and power of those who have come before us and those who walk with us. Communities have the experience and expertise to determine their own development, therefore we build on the power of communities’ lived experiences and incorporate this wisdom into our actions.

Courage
We are grounded by our vision for deep systemic transformation. This demands boldness and audacity to see and work beyond the institutionalized status quo. We meet, support, and elevate the courage of communities envisioning alternatives and realizing their priorities for development. We confront injustice and inequality with courageous conviction and bold tenacity, because the challenges faced by communities demand nothing less. We take action to defend the rights of people to life, self-determination, and a healthy environment.

Interdependence
We are one piece of a larger ecosystem. Trust, mutual reliance and shared leadership are vital for the movement to create the systemic change we seek. We learn from ongoing feedback with communities and partners.

Creativity
We are dedicated to ongoing transformation - of dominant systems and of ourselves - and collaborative innovation. We utilize bold and impactful tactics and strategies to disrupt the existing systems of power and oppression. With adaptability, we create space for possibility, opportunity, and change.

Strategies

Community Organizing

Communities have the desire and expertise to determine their own development priorities, but in today’s development, these decisions are regularly made without them. To ensure development is instead led by community priorities, IAP reinforces a well-organized resistance to proposed and existing projects and advocates for alternatives where communities can realize their own development priorities.

Data

Improved participation and access to information in the development process is not just about advocating for improved policy and practice among those deciding development. IAP believes access to information and improved participation is multi-directional: the personal experience and expertise from communities, activists, and local civil society should be exchanged with and contribute to information held by governments, companies, and development finance institutions.

Advocacy

To reinforce community-led campaigns toward governments, development
finance institutions, and companies, IAP uses the policies and practice of
development finance institutions as a point of entry and the experience and expertise of communities as the center of advocacy.

Approaches

IAP has four key approaches for all strategies: Partner, Reinforce, Redistribute Power, and Transform.

Partner

With the mutual intention of sustaining deep relationships, we strengthen bonds and actions among communities, civil society and social movements to advance community-led development. We march together through successes and setbacks.

Partner in Community Organizing

IAP creates and distributes accessible materials that can be independently used by community organizers and facilitate connections to exchange experiences and tactics. We use community-led research as a mobilizing tool and to foster ownership of development processes.

Partner in Data

IAP collectively organizes, produces and distributes information on development and community priorities with local groups and communities. We work collaboratively to monitor and track the practices of development finance institutions and integrate data and recommendations from community-led research to create broader policy change.

Partner in Advocacy

IAP operates within a movement to reinforce campaigns led by communities. We share case studies and tactics from community organizers to inspire others. We complement our partners’ expertise to realize community-centered models of development.

Reinforce

Respecting existing struggles and histories, we complement and build upon community-led priorities and campaigns. IAP creates and widens spaces for the lived experience of people to lead the policy and practice of development.

Reinforce Community Organizing

Using community-led research, IAP works in solidarity with communities to leverage their own priorities to advance and lead campaigns. We exchange tools and participate in trainings with local groups to strengthen their campaigns

Reinforce Data

With innovative technology, IAP expands the movement’s ability to monitor projects and practices of development finance institutions. We complement the expertise gathered through community-led research to inform campaigns and development priorities.

Reinforce Advocacy

IAP builds advocacy campaigns around the lived experiences and priorities of communities, and pushes for governments, development finance institutions, and companies to implement policies and practices that are community-centered.

Redistribute Power

To realize community-led development, with communities, civil society and social movements we relocate and build power outside of dominant systems.

Redistribute Power in Community Organizing

IAP promotes the demands of communities and local groups as experts in the decisions that affect their lives and environment. We create materials and provide advice on concrete strategies for communities to participate directly in development planning and decision-making.

Redistribute Power in Data

IAP interrupts and shifts who produces, holds and has access to information about development to a shared civil society space. To expose violations and abuses in the existing development process, through community-led research we reinforce communities asserting their role and demands.

Redistribute Power in Advocacy

We recognize the position and access we hold as an international organization and as partners in a community-led campaign. We support community-led campaigns to propose and enact alternatives to projects created without them.

Transform

With innovative and proven tactics, we creatively approach how we reclaim development. We will collectively reflect and evolve.

Transform Community Organizing

IAP practices mutual listening and learning to grow the collective understanding to change how today’s development is done. Recognizing the wealth of knowledge and historic discrimination, we prioritize partnerships with groups led by and involving youth, women, and indigenous peoples.

Transform Data

In collaboration with partners, IAP uses data to highlight trends by geography, sector, development finance institution, company and community-led response to inform and strengthen community-led campaigns. Based on these trends, our recommendations integrate community priorities and demonstrate the benefits of community-led development.

Transform Advocacy

Rooted in community priorities, IAP supports strategic campaigns to advance community-led priorities in the policy and practice of governments, development finance institutions, and companies. We participate in collective and solidarity campaigns within existing alliances.

Programs

The Global Advocacy Team
IAP’s Global Advocacy Team initiative brings together incredible community activists from around the world to conduct community-led research and mobilize communities to strengthen local campaigns and collectively change development policy. To do this, the Global Advocacy Team reinforces existing local campaigns with community-led data and identifying development priorities. Based on real-life experiences, the Global Advocacy Team presents formal policy recommendations to change how development is designed, funded and implemented. The next iteration of the Global Advocacy Team will train 8 community organizers from around the world to organize and create their own community-led development plans.

Read more: bit.ly/IAP_GAT

Community Action Guides
IAP produces Community Action Guides with local activists and partners. Used by community organizers to start or strengthen local campaigns, IAP’s materials and tools are interactive and accessible. The Community Action Guides demystify the development process, introduce the actors involved, and offer strategies for community-led solutions to development. These are reinforced with collective exercises and accessible case examples about how other communities around the world have responded to development challenges.

Read more: bit.ly/IAP_Action

Early Warning System
The Early Warning System ensures local communities, and the organizations that support them, have verified information about projects being proposed at major development finance institutions and clear strategies for advocacy – ideally before funding is decided. The Early Warning System exchanges information, advice, tools and resources with communities, the local organizations supporting them to inform development actors. The information exchanged includes accessible information about projects at development finance institutions, including the roles of any private actors, and critical data from community-led research efforts, With data from local communities and development finance institutions, the Early Warning System exposes trends in development by sector, bank, geography and community response.

Read more: ews.rightsindevelopment.org

Contact

accountabilityproject.org
ews.rightsindevelopment.org

Blog: bit.ly/IAPblog
Twitter: @4accountability
Facebook: bit.ly/IAP4FB

iap@accountabilityproject.org
ews@rightsindevelopment.org

Download the Strategic Plan in English, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Thai, or Vietnamese.

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