Sustainable impact requires systematic methodology, not just good intentions. Our process integrating human rights and development methodology and technology into community-led development provides a replicable framework that other organizations can adapt.
The Framework
Phase 1: Community-Centered Assessment
- Listen first: What do communities identify as their priority needs and key to a sense of belonging?
- Asset mapping: What existing resources and capabilities can we build upon?
- Capacity evaluation: Where are the gaps between current and desired capacity?
Phase 2: Collaborative Design
- Co-create solutions with community members, not for them
- Integrate technology as tool, not solution
- Design for partner dignity and agency, not beneficiary dependency
Phase 3: Implementation with Continuous Feedback
- Pilot programs with built-in adaptation mechanisms
- Regular community feedback loops
- Adjust based on real-world results, not theoretical models
Phase 4: Sustainability Planning
- Invest in local capacity to understand and communicate needs, maintain and expand programs
- Create multiple resource streams for long-term viability
- Document learnings for leader development, resource raising and replication elsewhere
Application Example
PSYDEH’s 2021-2025 work demonstrates this thinking: Starting with rural and Indigenous women expressed need for economic opportunities, we co-designed programming that combines digital inclusion + women-led economic development + democracy strengthening. The results: 60 women organize their own network of cooperatives supplying global demand for local-sources artisan goods; hundreds of women meet annually to develop their own sustainable development agenda that influences government policy; annual community impact projects are produced with 3rd party funding; dozens of women secure leadership roles in their communities, and much more.
Relevance to Ohio/USA/Global Context
This methodology transfers directly to Northeast Ohio’s/USA/Global development challenges:
- Technology and human belonging initiatives that center community needs
- Workforce development and programs that build on existing assets and success
- Cross-sector partnerships that create collective impact and sustainable funding models
- Policy advocacy that reflects and amplifies community voices
The key insight: Technology and human rights and resources are tools for community empowerment, not substitutes for community leadership.
This servant leadership approach—listen first, co-create solutions, build local capacity—ensures that development initiatives strengthen rather than replace community agency. See below for more details on PSYDEH’s programming evolution.
2021-2022 “Cuando Amanece” gave fish while teaching how to keep fishing, specifically: (A) deliver short-term impact demanded by women during the pandemic and environmental crises, (B) offer groups of women real-world experience operating as a collective producing their own projects, (C) identify and strengthen the bonds between and among PSYDEH and a large group of women leaders ready to participate in multi-year work, and (D) give needed experience organizing and training collectives of women to our new Field Corps of majority Indigenous women professionals working out of our new field office.
This work led to 164 women, organized into 23 different collectives representing 31 communities, producing 23 projects involving wood handicrafts, beauty and aesthetics, egg production and chicken and pig raising, food stalls, textile and pottery production, vegetable gardens (milpas), and a point-of-sale project at the national level for sale of local-sourced goods.
2022-2025 transformational digital inclusion programming Tech For All (TFA) in partnership with USA-based Adobe, Team4Tech, Viasat, and Zoom, among many other corporate, foundation, and government allies.
2022-2025 Sierra Madre Network (SMN) flagship programming is built out of Cuando Amanece and TFA in line with six of the 17 goals of the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Here, PSYDEH empowers 60 rural and Indigenous women to (A) build four municipal-level cooperatives that generate direct income for members and an increased platform for their voices while educating 100s of their neighbors on how they can do the same, when also (B) leading meaningful community impact projects guided by their own unprecedented women-led development agenda updated at our unprecedented regional public forum in November 2024 co-organized by the Network and PSYDEH.
To learn more about TFA & SMN, check out this 3-minute video ad for tech companies, short January 2023 radio story to hear me speak to Oxford professor Dr. Matt Wright about renewables in Mexican communities, and the below human-story-oriented video series.
