Stronger Together

Seeking to respond to challenges faced by micro entrepreneurs in Chacarita, one of Asunción’s marginalized neighborhoods, Habitat for Humanity Paraguay submitted an unsolicited application to USAID/Paraguay. The proposal focused on refurbishing homes for micro entrepreneurs to increase business sales and strengthen local economic resilience amid the COVID-19 pandemic. This marked the beginning of one of the Mission’s first co-creations with a new partner through an unsolicited proposal under the Local Works program. USAID/Paraguay was committed to building a partnership upon the basis of mutuality and trust. 

USAID/Paraguay, recognizing traditional power dynamics inherent in a donor-partner relationship, sought to disrupt these norms. Their approach emphasized the importance of having a dialogue with Habitat for Humanity Paraguay and building a flexible review process in an open and transparent review space. They launched a co-creation process that affirmed local expertise, leadership, and creativity of Habitat for Humanity Paraguay, opening a space to think through development challenges together. USAID/Paraguay utilized flexible funding from the Unsolicited Solutions for Locally Led Development (US4LLD) Program to address identified needs, including those broader than the scope of the initial application.

Mutual Analysis in Co-creation: The Key to Unlocking Results

USAID/Paraguay actively promoted a culture of learning and honesty, creating an environment that promoted open discussion and dialogue. While analyzing the development challenge, this environment encouraged Habitat for Humanity Paraguay to deeply consider factors that affected the local context. This reflection surfaced actionable ideas that addressed how the activity could be most responsive to local needs. Habitat for Humanity Paraguay capitalized on the opportunity by engaging in open dialogue with key team members across relevant offices in USAID/Paraguay, iteratively adapting and adjusting their initial proposal. Throughout this co-creation, USAID/Paraguay continued building a relationship of trust and partnership through the design process, while also contributing its own experience. This mutual space of collaboration led to building additional components into the activity focused on community resilience and strengthening local leadership, such as capacity strengthening initiatives for community leaders and their networks, and support for micro entrepreneurs to reinforce economic resilience. 

Applying Contextually and Locally Relevant Data

The co-creation process opened a creative opportunity to drive locally responsive and adaptive programming, mutually identifying qualitative research questions and indicators looking beyond solely quantitative data. Through a co-created monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) plan, critical learning questions and indicators were designed to measure the program’s impact on issues important to local community members. This approach enabled community input to contribute to activity modification throughout implementation. Simultaneously, it allowed Habitat for Humanity Paraguay to capture key data on issues that mattered to local stakeholders while also enabling the activity to be flexible and maintain relevance in a quickly changing context. Using locally defined qualitative indicators, the activity captured lessons that would improve workshop implementation with community leaders. These indicators became an important accountability mechanism to ensure the activity delivered results for local community members. Habitat for Humanity Paraguay gained key knowledge for future programming, including lessons on the importance of coupling technical assistance and housing improvement to increase community resilience in the face of income instability.

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Strengthening Community Resilience 

This mutual partnership received greater interest from the community than anticipated and yielded new insights around how to personalize small business support. The locally led approach of Habitat for Humanity Paraguay was instrumental to effectively mobilize community resources and identify and strengthen factors that supported the economic resilience of participating communities.

The activity evaluation reported 90 percent of small businesses increased their income; 61 percent of small businesses have maintained or continued to increase their income despite the unfavorable economic context. Small businesses also reported that 47 percent of participants had more customers, could better forecast their stock, and have improved their product visibility.

The increase in income for Chacarita’s micro entrepreneurs was a direct consequence of having improved other factors such as agility, self-esteem, motivation, independence, confidence, and security. Habitat for Humanity Paraguay was also instrumental in effectively mobilizing community resources, utilizing its expertise and deep-rooted community relationships to tap into key networks of local organizations and individuals who held their trust. Swiftly providing equipment, appliances, and other necessities, Habitat for Humanity Paraguay helped communities start over again.

“My business is everything to me. Thanks to this, my self-esteem was restored.” 
- A local Asunción community member

One of Chacarita’s community members explains their lived impact of the activity as, “As a woman, having my business at home means proving to myself that I am capable of anything.”

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Innovating practices and shaping future initiatives 

Beyond a successful collaboration with USAID and furthering meaningful community impact, this activity gained recognition across Habitat for Humanity Paraguay’s global network of chapter organizations. The staff presented their co-creation experience with USAID to colleagues at Habitat for Humanity headquarters highlighting how the organization could further advance sustainable and locally led approaches. One partner from Habitat for Humanity Paraguay reflected on the mindset shift as a result of this collaboration, stating,"Many times we have heard that USAID, as a donor, could be difficult and intransigent for the administration or management of a project. However, today we can say that in this experience we feel them as true allies and not as the typical donor.”

USAID/Paraguay’s attention to traditional donor-partner power dynamics strengthened the award design process, providing space to listen to the partner, and local communities to leverage local technical expertise. This integrated approach and focus on mutual partnership ultimately resulted in a strong joint understanding of the activity’s vision while giving USAID the opportunity to simplify and tailor its processes to achieve the activity’s goals.

USAID/Paraguay used Local Works funds under the Unsolicited Solutions for Locally Led Development (US4LLD) opportunity to fund this award. Through the US4LLD program, Local Works sets aside a portion of its annual budget to provide USAID Missions with flexible funding to support unsolicited applications that advance locally led development.