HOW WE WORK

• We bring together communities, government bodies, local organizations and the private sector to design and implement our programs.
• We bring international technical experts and local knowledge and expertise from each community together to ensure we address needs in the most effective, integrated way possible.
• We effectively leverage funds from governments, foundations, local groups and the private sector to maximize impact and get the most value for our development dollars.
• We build the capacity of local partners, organizations, government and communities to be economically, socially and environmentally selfsufficient and able to withstand crises. In so doing, we leave behind legacy organizations that can continue our work once we are gone.
• We are accountable to our donors and the communities we work with around the world.

Community

CHF practices community-led development. We engage with communities through participatory methods that begin with community-wide meetings and lead to elected community councils. The council then leads the decision-making and prioritization process.

The council and community are closely involved in contributing to the project through money, labor or materials, designing the project, appointing local contractors and dealing with local government and other bodies who need to be involved in the project. When completed, it is the council that signs off on the project, before receiving ownership. Involvement and ownership translate to a higher likelihood of long-term sustainability.

Government

Completed projects often must be maintained by the local government, which needs to be involved from the earliest stages of design. In many of the countries where we work, especially post-conflict settings, local government and community interaction is uncommon, so CHF plays an important role in providing training to both sides on how to interact constructively. When necessary, CHF engages all levels of government in a project from the beginning to ensure their support.

Local organizations

CHF also engages with local organizations, faith-based, community-based, or otherwise, in our project design and implementation. They bring local knowledge and expertise to our work. At the same time, we work to build their technical capacity.

Private Sector

CHF believes that understanding the role of the local and international private sector is essential to empowering communities around the world. Our experience is that the private and not-for-profit sectors can learn from the each other and that the interests of the people we work with are best served by the two sectors doing business together with a double bottom line, matching commercial and community needs.

•  Providing workforce training to create skilled employees for demand industries,
• Expanding access to capital for small- and medium-sized enterprises,
• Linking local suppliers to international firms, and
• Advising corporations in how they can achieve greater social and shareholder impact with their investments.

Leverage

“How can we get the most for our development dollars?”
This is an important question being asked more and more frequently. CHF International’s answer is leveraging. CHF International is funded by many organizations, from US government bodies to overseas development agencies, major foundations, corporations and loyal supporters of our work. We are also funded by the private sector, communities and governments in the countries where we work, worldwide.

Governments, corporations and organizations who wish to undertake development may find it difficult with limited funding; but CHF International is able to bring investments together to maximize the positive impact of these funds and achieve more “for our development dollars.”

Overall, this means that CHF’s total expense on administration and fundraising each year is under 10%, one of the lowest levels among international NGOs. The funds we receive are put to their maximum use in an efficient, effective and accountable manner, with positive results for millions of people around the world each year.

Building Capacity

“Building capacity” means improving a country or a community’s ability to meet their own needs more effectively. Effective capacity building happens when a country’s local knowledge interacts with outside expertise that is not present in that country. And it works both ways – the local and outside experts learn from each other.

CHF International’s experience is that the most effective model for staffing a project is a small number of expatriate technical experts working alongside a large corps of expert local staff members. So CHF operates with between 95-100% local staff in any given context. Expatriates bring technical expertise that may not exist in a country and they can bring ideas and initiatives from other environments. Expatriates need not mean ‘American.’ CHF uses regional expatriates and, additionally, many of our local staff become expatriate technical experts in other countries, engendering cultural understanding and knowledge exchange from Haiti to Iraq and Serbia to Afghanistan.

As a country’s local capacity increases, expatriate staff can be phased out, as in the case of our lending institutions, most of which are already in the process of becoming locally registered companies, run entirely by national or regional staff. This model of partnership makes it possible for countries to learn from each other, for technical expertise to be transferred in a timely and useful fashion – and to create communities and societies that are self-directed.

To learn more about CHF’s areas of expertise and our capacity to undertake our work, click here.

Legacy

The nature of CHF’s work means that our vision of a better world is one where we no longer need to exist. And this is what we are building. Our focus in any program is to build the capacity of the local population to undertake their own development.

CHF does not embed itself in a country. Where there is a demand and a need, we address it. But throughout the process of addressing that need, we aim to build the capacity of existing local organizations or create legacy organizations that can do our job when we leave.

Accountability

Every cent we spend is accountable to the donor, whether the US government or individuals from around the world. CHF International is accountable to US law, undergoes strenuous annual audits and fulfils all legal requirements to ensure that the people we employ and our beneficiaries are those intended to benefit from our work.

Measuring Progress

CHF International measures the progress of each program according to strict standards set by our donors, and we report back to them on a regular basis. CHf undergoes strenuous audits on an annual basis. Additionally, we give regular updates on our website and in our publications of our achievements and lessons learned on our projects. For example, the SCALE-UP Annual Report, details progress measured and lessons learned.