The Power of Community-led Initiatives

Luena Foundation aims to serve and safeguard vulnerable children around the world by protecting their basic human rights and by fostering love, hope, strength and joy. We use the donations we receive to invest in locally-led grassroots projects and organizations whose mission is to create a more compassionate world for children everywhere.

We believe that the people most affected by poverty and social injustice are the ones who should have both the power and resources to lead the decision-making processes that impact their communities. So we search for the local leaders… the individuals and organizations that have the indigenous knowledge and local capacity to elicit sustainable development from the inside out. By seeking out and strengthening these community-based local actors, we are changing the paradigm on poverty reduction to one of localized humanitarianism. Our strategy to implement "localized humanitarianism" is project-based. The projects we take on are always brought forth by the communities themselves, and they are always deeply involved from the planning stages through the execution and later on through the follow-on analysis. We require a minimum 25% community contribution, including at least 10% community cash contribution to the total financial cost of the project. When the community invests in this way, the entire project becomes more sustainable, as the community feels a greater sense of ownership in the process. Children and the communities they live in become their own agents of change.