Elevating Local Voices
We use Collective Action to elevate local voices.
Solving the complex challenges that the international development community faces often requires bringing together a wide variety of actors, in ways that allow changes at a level far beyond what one organization acting alone could accomplish. Doing this well requires motivating multiple, sometimes disparate, groups under a unifying framework for action and ensuring their commitment and buy-in.
LINC’s approach to collective action invests heavily in developing local stakeholders’ own understanding of the system affecting their interests. We achieve this by facilitating local actors to first come together around a shared objective and bringing out their diverse voices. We then use approaches like communities of practice and multi-stakeholder dialogues, or tools like group exercises, listening tours, community outreach, and ethnographic research methods to help facilitate the groups to co-create and then implement solutions.
Our approach to collective action balances trust with results. It’s a process that can last anywhere from a week to several years, but it’s a proven one to ensure multiple perspectives are captured and stakeholders reach a consensus on resources, priorities, and action plans to advance locally driven priorities.
LINC’s systems thinking tools help to foster this consensus. One of the tools that LINC leverages is the “Participatory Systems Mapping”, a five-step methodology that enables strategic actors to come together to gain a better understanding of their own system, create joint visions of how it could improve, and agree on practical ways to do it.
Brewing and Bottling Change in Kenya
LINC’s partnership with major employers in Kenya through a collective action initiative that produced concrete, win-win results.
LINC Helps Coca-Cola and EABL Lead on Disability-inclusive Employment
Two of Kenya’s most recognizable employers — Coca-Cola and East African Breweries Limited (EABL) — wanted to move beyond high-level commitments to practical, disability-inclusive hiring and retention. Partnering with NGOs and Disabled Persons Organizations (DPOs), LINC designed a lightweight, action-oriented learning architecture to turn good intentions into progress. We:
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Convened HR and operations leads into two focused working groups on inclusive recruitment and workplace accommodations.
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Facilitated clinic-style peer sessions that surfaced real bottlenecks — from sourcing channels and interview adjustments to accommodation workflows.
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Documented decisions after each session, capturing concrete commitments, owners, and deadlines.
Within just two learning cycles, partners launched pilot changes: co-branded inclusive job postings with DPOs, standardized accommodation request routes at both plant and HQ levels, and short manager huddles on inclusive supervision. Progress was tracked through a simple commitment tracker, ensuring accountability and momentum.
The business payoff: lower hiring friction, a stronger compliance posture, and visible early wins that energized a growing network of inclusive employers.
Thought Leadership in Collective Action
LINC’s leadership in this space includes the global research project “Collective Action Models in USAID Programming” (2021-2022) which produced Toolkits for USAID and host country facilitators on how to integrate collective action in their work.
Collaboration Models Toolkit
Based on the research conducted under the Collective Action activity, LINC developed a user-friendly, utilization-focused toolkit that includes the following:
