17 – Partnerships for the goals
Voluntary Local Review of Klapmuts and Kayamandi Townships, Stellenbosch Municipality
Regional focus: Southern Africa / South Africa Time: January – November 2025 This SDG implementation progress report project follows up on previous ICLD research on conducting VLRs with a participatory methodology. According to this, participatory VLRs enable the process itself to contribute to democratic change and accelerate the SDG implementation. Abstract: There is an increasing realization that…
Kalix & Masaka United Against the Plastic Crisis
The ICLD-funded partnership project “Education for Mindset Change” between Kalix Municipality and Masaka City in Uganda has played a key role in transforming education for children and young people. By focusing on reducing the impact of plastics and fostering sustainable communities, the collaboration between Kalix and Masaka aims to inspire and empower future generations. From…
Västerås – Shatsk, Ukraine
Project: A Safer Future for Children The project “A safer future for children” seeks to address the problem of insufficient awareness and capacity to protect and fulfill children’s rights in rural and small communities, particularly in the context of war and crises. This issue affects community resilience and children’s access to education, safety, and psychological…
Many new partnerships projects approved
ICLD has approved 14 municipal partnerships totaling over 16 million SEK. The approved partnership projects span 18 months and all aim to strengthen local democracy in the participating municipalities by increasing citizen participation, equity, transparency, and accountability. Most of the projects now approved have previously completed a so called one-year “preparatory phase”. Participation and Equity…
BUILDS-UP – Building Universal and Inclusive Local Design – a Swedish-Ukrainian Partnership
Regional focus: Ukraine Time: December 2024 – December 2026 ICLD is part of a cooperation project funded by the Swedish Institute, under the Ukraine Cooperation Programme. The project BUILDS-UP is led by Malmö University, with ICLD and NGO Poruch as partners. Project summary: The BUILDS-UP cooperation project addresses challenges from the war, and supports Ukraine’s drive towards…
Jönköping – Berdychiv, Ukraine
Building Better Cities Together The partnership between Jönköping and Berdychiv focuses on strengthening citizen participation and digital innovation in urban planning. While technical foundations for city planning are already in place, they are now incorporating democratic tools—especially citizen dialogue—to ensure inclusive development of new urban districts. In Berdychiv, guidelines for citizen dialogue already exist, and…
Höör – Kopychyntsi, Ukraine
Project: Höör and Kopychyntsi Youth Empowerment Initiative The overarching goal of Höör and Kopychyntsi is to increase youth engagement in local decision-making. Currently, youths have low awareness of the democratic processes in their community. As a result, their interests are not represented, which in turn creates a growing divide between the youth and local authorities.…
Kalix och Masaka, Uganda
The partnership of Kalix and Masaka are currently implementing 2 projects, both having a focus on youth. The Grow the Future project addresses the problem of limited capacities to include youth and children in decision-making processes in the local government in Masaka, Uganda. The main goal is to prioritize decision-making positions for young people and…
Call for proposals: Community empowering Voluntary Local Reviews
Open call for proposals for Voluntary Local Reviews with a participatory methodology, led by researchers and conducted together with a local government. Introduction ICLD seeks proposals for the development of Voluntary Local Reviews – documents that monitor and report on SDG implementation progress at the local level – to be conducted as joint research projects…
Empowering Local Voices: The Role of Participatory Research in SDG Voluntary Local Reviews
This report analyses the use of community-based, participatory methods in producing Voluntary Local Reviews. Since 2022, the Swedish International Centre for Local Democracy has supported municipalities with policy integration of the Sustainable Development Goals. Research teams together with three of these municipalities (Bijeljina in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Emboreet and Kibaha in Tanzania) applied community-based participatory…
