Community-led local development (CLLD) is a tool for involving citizens at local level in developing responses to the social, environmental and economic challenges we face today. It is a bottom-up approach to find solutions on local level and receive EU-funding that matches local needs. The European Commission expects CLLD to facilitate implementing integrated approaches among the European Structural and Investment Funds (ESI Funds) concerned to achieve different thematic objectives at local level.
In the 5 countries with the highest population of Roma people –the three Visegrad countries Hungary, Slovakia and Czech Republic together with Romania and Bulgaria, CLLD can be an effective tool to support the social inclusion of Roma through targeted local approaches. It is not only a funding tool, but can also involve Roma civil society directly in the development of local development strategies and thus additionally contribute to their empowerment as active citizens. We consider the bottom up approach promoted by CLLD as being one of the most effective, open and transparent processes of civic involvement and participation put in place by the European Commission.
Despite this promising approach, the project partners have in the past years experienced that still very little funding in our region goes to projects proposed by Roma and very few Roma are so far engaged in Local Action Groups responsible for the CLLD. The European Roma Grassroots Organisation Network (ERGO) has previously developed a training trajectory for Local Action Groups (including local authorities) and Roma civil society as well as a tool to audit the quality of the CLLD process for Roma inclusion. With this project it is our aim to take this work further in our region, strengthen our common advocacy on the topic and to upgrade it to the new urban CLLD process.
More information about the CLLD: https://ergonetwork.org/our-work/monitoring/ccld
