Cat-Dan Lai-Smith
Knowledge Management, Localisation and DEI Lead, Save the Children,
Canada

With over 100 years of experience, Save the Children has a significant store of knowledge that needs to be unlocked. It’s vital that we share knowledge on what works best for children to
multiply our impact.

Effective and sustainable knowledge management (KM) must play a critical role in driving forward Save the Children’s localization ambitions. Equitable partnerships, strengthening organisational capacity, community-based programming and advocacy, and fostering local leadership have been central features of Save the Children’s approach to ensuring child rights in all contexts for decades.

However, many of these efforts have not been properly documented nor, until recently, not understood through a localised perspective. Our ability to document, catalogue, and communicate our localised approaches is key to keep us accountable to the children and communities we serve, as well as the partners we work alongside. A robust KM system impacts our capacity to learn from these experiences and adapt, integrate, and scale best and promising practices for shifting power and locally-led development.

Our KM vision for localisation is centred on a belief that knowledge is power, and that we and the local actors we work alongside need access to the evidence, knowledge, and learnings derived from localised approaches to effectively shift power and produce lasting results for children. We envision a KM system that is accessible and responsive and will enable us to improve our locally-led capabilities and increase the visibility of local actors to achieve greater and more sustainable impacts for children and communities.

Keywords: localisation; locally-led development; shifting power; equitable partnerships; organisational capacity strengthening