By Maaike Matelski and Lise Woensdregt
Within the field of development research and practice, there is a growing awareness that interventions aimed at supporting emancipation struggles in the Global South should prioritize local actors and agendas. Consequently, community-based organizations (CBOs) are increasingly considered vehicles of change. But who are the communities that constitute these CBOs? To complement existing literature on CBOs that focuses primarily on Northern case studies, we decided to analyse this question in relation to two types of CBOs engaged in advocacy work in Kenya. Our findings testify to the diversity of identities, forms and goals of organizations that come under the banner ‘community-based’.
Typologies of CBOs
The label ‘community-based’ is frequently used by groups engaged in self-representation on different levels. Moreover, it has become central to the work of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and donors seeking to connect with ‘grassroots’ populations. When it comes to advocacy, community members typically present themselves as a fixed group in order to strengthen their cause and to become more attractive for NGOs and donors to work with. Yet in practice, a community can be issue-based, identity-based or place-based, while its membership can be fixed or changeable, self-ascribed or defined by others.
Over the past six years, we have both worked with CBOs in Kenya. Our experiences mirror the diversity of origins, views and identities of Kenyan advocacy communities. Lise worked with a male sex worker-led organization (SLO) in Nairobi which has established significant connections in the international aid system, including with European health-based donors. Founded in 2009 as a support group addressing the lack of attention toward young men at risk of living with HIV in Kenya, the CBO has grown significantly over the past decade. It now serves 5,000 men annually, and remains dedicated to improving their living and working conditions.
Maaike interviewed community members in a rural area threatened by mining-induced displacement, who were encouraged by advocacy NGOs from outside the affected area to organize themselves in resistance to mining. As a community member recounted the start of their organized resistance: ‘They [the NGO] came to us teaching about how coal was formed, the dangers. At the end they told us: please have a CBO, because I can see there is danger coming, people will grab your natural resources. So please can you arrange yourselves.’
While both types of communities make use of community mobilizing to advance their cause, they approach it in distinct ways. The male SLO grew organically as members from across Kenya and even neighbouring countries come together in Nairobi to protect their rights e.g. against police violence. Formal staff members are salaried through the CBOs’ fundermediaries, while most members contribute to the work as volunteers, receiving stipends to support advocacy and outreach efforts.
The community members in the mining case represent different areas of the coal basin. While some had pre-existing ties in the form of farmer cooperatives, they only started organizing formally as a community in response to the mining threat, and especially upon being connected to more professional environmental and women’s rights NGOs. Consequently, while the male SLO has maintained a consistent structure and formal leadership over time, the rural-based CBOs operate more fluidly, with frequent changes in name and membership depending on the presence and interest of community members actively engaged in anti-mining advocacy.
Role in the aid chain
The two typologies of CBOs described above have distinct implications for their roles within the international aid chain, a term used to describe the flow of funding from donors to recipients, often via multiple layers of intermediaries, including NGOs. The rural-based CBOs had no direct connections to the international aid chain. Although they received advocacy training from a local human rights organization, this organization itself suffered significant budget cuts after the Covid-19 pandemic, leaving it unable to provide more than minimal daily allowances for training participants.
In contrast, the SLO in Nairobi had access to more substantial funding, enabling it to compensate some of its community members as health workers. However, neither the community members nor the leadership were able to secure professional NGO-level salaries from their work. Despite being integral to major funding proposals, the SLO’s leaders expressed frustration over what they perceived as an unfair distribution of project budgets, feeling they were undervalued despite their critical contributions.
Rural-based CBO leaders, on the other hand, expressed less trust in their member’s ability to manage significant budgets, citing experiences of embezzlement of small membership fees and internal conflicts over leadership positions. Some founding leaders of these CBOs suggested that budgets would best be kept by trusted NGOs, with the stipulation that CBO members should be consulted for input and adequately compensated for their involvement. This highlights the differing approaches to financial management and trust dynamics between the two types of organizations.
What’s (in) a CBO?
The question ‘what’s (in) a CBO’ can be answered in multiple ways, depending on whether one examines its membership composition, financial resources, or the capacity of its members to manage and lead it. Some CBOs, with more experience and established roles in the aid chain, assert their right to a greater say in advocacy work. Others, particularly less experienced CBOs, are happy to have their interests represented by professional NGOs, provided these organizations engage meaningfully with community members and report back transparently.
Our research shows that this feedback loop is often insufficient or takes inaccessible forms, such as online reports in English that community members cannot easily access. Advocacy NGOs frequently depend on the identities and input of marginalized communities, such as photographs and personal stories, to legitimize their role as representatives. However, our research shows that marginalized groups can and do speak for themselves, though their contributions and skills are not always recognized or valued by (trans)national advocacy organizations.
To address this, donors and other actors in the aid chain could adopt a more nuanced approach, taking the unique identity and composition of each CBO seriously. By identifying the characteristics and capacities of individual CBOs and leveraging their constituencies’ skills, external actors can play a more supportive role, fostering equitable and effective advocacy partnerships.
Maaike Matelski is Assistant Professor in the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Her research relates to the fields of civil society, human rights and development, with a particular focus on issues of voice, representation and legitimacy within rights-based advocacy. She has conducted ethnographic research in Myanmar, Kenya, Ghana and The Netherlands, and is author of the book Contested Civil Society in Myanmar: Local Change and Global Recognition (Bristol University Press, 2024).
Lise Woensdregt is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Her research centers on marginalized communities, particularly sex workers and queer youth, in Kenya and The Netherlands. She is committed to fostering more inclusive forms of knowledge. To contribute to inclusive knowledges, in her research she combines ethnographic and Community-Led Research and Action (CLRA) methods to delve into the intricacies of knowledge politics within and outside the development sector.
Image by the authors