The Local Engagement Assessment Framework: A practitioner’s guide to integrating country ownership into development projects

The Local Engagement Assessment Framework (LEAF) was designed by Oxfam America, Save the Children, and the Overseas Development Institute as a tool for planning and assessing the level of local stakeholder engagement in development projects . Save the Children and Oxfam America have produced this Practitioners’ Guide – which explains how to use the LEAF – as a planning tool to help development professionals design, monitor, and evaluate projects to integrate strong country ownership principles.

The goal of the LEAF is to encourage the highest level of local ownership that is appropriate, based on the project and the context, in each phase and element of a discrete project or activity. It can be used across agencies, countries, and development sectors.

The LEAF facilitates an assessment of ownership by graphically depicting who among the host country government, civil society, and private sector was engaged with a project, how that engagement empowered local stakeholders, and during what parts of the project cycle the engagement took place. This guide includes:

• A step-by-step description of how to apply the LEAF to a project
• A workbook for using the LEAF for project planning
• A sample, real-world application of the LEAF
• An examination of the LEAF’s limitations