The Power of Local: A Social Impact Paradigm that Works

This article was inspired by a recent conversation between WeRobotics and Tiamiyou Radji, Director of Senegal Flying Labs. Before founding his social enterprise in 2016 and joining the Flying Labs Network in 2019, Tiamiyou had a long and accomplished career in the international development sector.

The news spreads quickly, as news of crisis often does. One government in a faraway land makes a decision, and the ripples are felt across oceans, reaching places where every resource matters. They are felt in health centres where nurses count on dwindling supplies. In classrooms where teachers confront low national literacy rates with little more than sheer will. In villages where children line up for their midday meal. In disaster-vulnerable neighbourhoods where rainfall sweeps away homes in a night. In offices where development workers have lost their livelihoods. Even large international organizations dedicated to empowerment, diversification, and long-term resilience are shutting down—unable to uphold the very principles they champion. The consequences of the halt to USAID funding have been swift and sharp.

It is a story as old as development itself: promises made, promises broken, communities left scrambling. And in the wake of this decision, we see the deeper truth often discussed: If a single entity can bring the entire infrastructure of global development to its knees, then that infrastructure was never solid to begin with.

International development practitioners have said for years that localization is the future of development, and that local communities are best placed to solve the challenges they face. So intuitive is the basic premise that we teach it to children: change must come from within. But despite ever-strengthening calls to shift the power, power remains concentrated in the grips of a few who get to decide what resources flow where and to what ends. 

In the traditional development model, a handful of organizations—often based in the Global North—decide which initiatives to fund, influencing the futures of millions in the Global South. Local communities and even national governments are forced to reshape their missions to align with what appeals to distant decision-makers, rather than what truly meets their needs. Solutions designed for entirely different cultural, economic, and geographic contexts are imported and implemented with little adaptation. Foreign teams arrive with funds tied to predetermined impact indicators, and they set to work, often with an implicit bias as to what knowledge is valuable and what processes are effective. 

In these circumstances, community buy-in and local ownership are squashed before they ever have a chance. But without them, the interventions often fail to create lasting change. Instead, they produce a cycle of short-term initiatives whose numbers and stories serve more to justify the continued presence of these organizations than to build real, long-term solutions. Thus the local communities are left navigating the same persistent challenges, now compounded by a growing dependence on external aid. In this system, sustainability and genuine collaboration take a backseat while control remains in the hands of outsiders.

A Different Understanding of Power

For years, the Flying Labs Network has quietly demonstrated that a different model is possible. One that does not rely wholly on the benevolence of distant donors. One that does not wait for approval from international headquarters. One that builds on a social entrepreneurial approach. One that thrives not in the shadow of foreign aid but in the light of the Power of Local.

Our Glocalization Model, co-created by WeRobotics and Flying Labs, creates an infrastructure that brings together independent grassroots activities and collaborative big-picture advocacy. With this model, local experts design and implement the solutions that their communities need, then connect across borders to collaborate and share knowledge, and return to their localities to replicate and adapt what they have learned. Knowledge flows from local regions to the global stage and back again, allowing local communities to connect and grow together, not as beneficiaries but as equals. 

But what makes this model truly different? In a word, sustainability.

Unlike many organizations under the traditional development model, often dependent on centralized oversight and external funding, Flying Labs operate as independent entities. If WeRobotics were to close its doors today, Flying Labs in Senegal, Bangladesh, or Panama would still stand. While challenges may arise in the absence of the Network, they will survive and thrive—because they don’t rely on WeRobotics or the Flying Labs Network for funding. Instead, they rely on local expertise, collaboration, and knowledge-sharing. Even when a Flying Labs team leaves the Network, it doesn’t mean an end to their work; they continue operating, and when circumstances allow, they can apply to rejoin, as can other organizations in their country.

The Power of Local means that directives don’t come from foreign organizations. Instead, local experts tackle challenges they witness firsthand, working with the resources available to them. Each Flying Labs determines its own goals, institutional structure, and path to sustainability. This independence makes Flying Labs deeply embedded in their communities, responsive to changing contexts and in tune with local needs. They work hand in hand with local governments, building the trust needed to sustain their projects. And this trust comes from the shared understanding that the data and knowledge they produce remain in the communities they serve, not in distant institutions in Europe or the US. Whether working on climate, environmental, or agricultural data, Flying Labs ensure that local insights stay local, empowering communities to use and benefit from their own information.

Beyond dependence and even independence is interdependence. This is where the Glocalization model shines. Each standing on its own feet, Flying Labs then connect through the Network to exchange knowledge and collaborate, strengthening one another’s expertise, opportunities, and relationship networks. Rather than replacing partnerships between local and global organizations, it strengthens them. Local and global organizations each have unique value to offer, and when roles are redefined to center local leadership with global support, the impact they can create together is immense. Ultimately, people need to believe that they are creating change for themselves and their own communities. This is what makes our approach sustainable. This is the Power of Local.

When asked what power means to them, Flying Labs shared a range of perspectives. The common thread that emerged was that they see power not as a weapon to wield over others but as a tool for creating change—one that belongs to everyone. Many communities in the Global South are rooted in collectivist values, where progress is a shared journey rather than an individual pursuit. This belief is reflected in the African proverb that is the Network’s guiding mantra: Alone we go fast, together we go far. And the Glocalization Model—with its emphasis on diversity as strength, decentralized power structures and shared governance, and open collaboration and sharing—draws from this understanding of the Power of Local to create lasting impact at scale.

The top-down model, where large international organizations control funding and dictate its distribution, has achieved a great deal in sectors such as health, education, disaster, climate, and food security. But it has proven unsustainable in the long term. What if, instead of trying to patch its cracks, we built something new? Something that relies not on dependence but on collective power?

A Time for Courage

Transitions are rarely gentle. It may feel easier right now to call for caution and to double down on deliberation. But we know now that aid dependence is not a viable development strategy. Now is the time for the courage to course correct, to shift away from centralized power structures and toward more sustainable, locally driven models of development.

More than ever, the world needs models for social impact that place power directly in the hands of the communities they are meant to serve. We need models that work—not just in theory, but in practice. And having been co-created for 9 years with the local experts of the Flying Labs Network, ours is ready to be adopted and adapted by international and global organizations to rethink their local-global infrastructures as well as local social enterprises eager to scale their impact globally.

There are many individuals and organizations who are either already on this path or are ready to move to action. We invite you to join us in exploring the world that is possible when local experts in various sectors use a decentralized, bottom-up approach to collaborate for change. Because the future of development lies not in the hands of distant decision-makers but in the hands of those who have always known what their communities need. It is in the hands of those who have been waiting, not for help, but for the world to finally listen.