If you struggle to connect global policy with frontline impact, you’re not alone. Most people think that the biggest gap in the humanitarian system today is the lack of frameworks. It is not. The biggest gap is how far those frameworks fall from frontline reality.
If we ignore this truth, localisation remains rhetoric, grassroots movements lose resilience, and communities pay the price.
Let us be remembered not by the warnings we gave, but by the action we took.
Almost A Decade After The Grand Bargain
In 2016, 71 donor and aid organisations signed the Grand Bargain, committing to quality funding, localisation, participation of affected populations, flexible financing, anticipatory action, and harmonised reporting.
10-topic summary of commitments. On paper it was forward-leaning. In practice it has been uneven.
I joined the humanitarian sector around the time the deal was struck. I didn’t know the name then. What I knew was this: Grassroots teams needed local leadership, cost-efficient approaches, inclusive participation, and multi-year funding.
Most campaigners I met didn’t speak the language of agreements. They just solved local problems locally - because that’s where impact happens.
From 2017, I saw frontline movements expanding from Dakar to Nairobi, Banjul to Mogadishu and from Lagos to Addis Ababa. Movements for child safety, gender justice, and community protection spread through social media, radio, and grassroots networks. Young campaigners believed change was possible. Many still do. Yet after two Grand Bargain convenings and with another planned post-2026, we must ask: How much has really changed?
When Funding Predictability Collapses
I recently visited Dadaab and Kakuma refugee camps during a career reset. I was welcomed into homes, watched daily routines, and heard stories of routine waiting - waiting for food, waiting for protection services. Amid that waiting, funding cuts arrived. Volunteers are being stretched beyond capacity. Systems that should catch children slipping through cracks are becoming brittle.
The broader funding context is volatile. Major donor governments, including key programs tied to child health, family planning, and humanitarian response, are signalling strategic retrenchments and realignments.
This is not only less money; it is less predictable and less flexible money. Without predictability, small groups find it hard to forecast long-term or scale successful interventions.
Why Flexible Funding Still Matters
Many signatories to the 2016 Grand Bargain report that funding shortfalls restrict flexible, multi-year support. Flexible funding was meant to help organisations pivot when crises shift.
But most small frontline teams still chase project grants with rigid lines and tight deliverables. They juggle reporting deadlines while protecting children from violence, exploitation, and neglect.
Even when funds arrive, they often come tied to sectors that are easier to measure, think nutrition, water, or shelter, leaving child protection and psychosocial care on the margins.
Yet in crises, protection services are the safety net that prevents long-term harm. Treatment without safety is partial impact.
Many small nonprofits still operate like subcontractors, implementing defined outputs instead of shaping strategies. The system has not shifted from grant delivery to trusting local leadership. That must change.
Donors and CEOs talk about localisation, but its practice remains uneven.
A Shift You Might Overlook: People, Not Structures
Here’s the truth: the future of humanitarian response will not be built just by bigger institutions. It will be built by people - grounded, trusted, and familiar with their communities.
AI is here with us.
When the Grand Bargain was signed, with a call to embrace tech and digital tools, few could imagine deploying an entire app on phone with a few AI prompts that includes hosting, dashboards, and push notifications.
Now I can do exactly that. No dev team required. Iteration happens faster than funding cycles.
Personal brands are rising.
Two creators I met in Kenya, one in Lodwar, the other in Wajir, reach hundreds of thousands with local content that mainstream campaigns never accessed. They understand daily life in ways global planning cannot.
Why not train these creators in rights protection, referral pathways, and community safety? Cost-efficient localisation is not hype; it is proximity.
Capacity building doesn’t live in silos.
When one agency invests in local influencers, another, and another benefit from the downstream effect. Skills do not vanish when a grant ends. They migrate. Campaigners become civic leaders. Some win elections. They shape policy. This is where transformation becomes structural: when the frontline are the authors of change.
Practical Lessons for Donors and Policymakers
If the Grand Bargain is going to fully live beyond paper, donors must consider three shifts:
Fund Predictably and Flexibly: Multi-year support matters for keeping protection systems alive: caseworkers, volunteers, community mobilisers, and referral networks that children depend on.
Make the process easy and accessible.
Invest in Local Talent as Infrastructure: Training teachers, artists, influencers, and health volunteers yields compounding returns. These are the nodes of resilient communities.
Measure Transformation, Not Only Outputs: Protection and safety aren’t neat metrics. But ignoring them costs long-term stability.
A Hopeful Close
I do not know what the next Grand Bargain convening will look like after 2026. But I know this: the future is already being prototyped in small rooms, WhatsApp groups, community meetings, and across social networks.
If we invest in those people, their skills, tools, networks, and confidence, we don’t just localise. We accelerate.
We embed care where it actually lives. And we make child protection, community safety, and human dignity priorities not just for donors, but for communities themselves.
On my part, I am sharing free courses to ensure the momentum wont decelerate.
Tiny Teams Courses | Paste link to new tab if it doesn't open on email: https://tinyteams.africa/courses/
Transformation rarely begins with institutions. It begins with people, and people are moving. My question to you is: What are you doing to make things better?
— Jeremiah
