CDD provides village-level grants and facilitation that support communities in choosing and implementing the projects they consider local priorities, including basic health and education services, local infrastructure, income-generating activities, or other community priorities. This brief synthesizes findings from a range of rigorous evaluations to describe what we know about the multidimensional impacts of CDD on governance and collective action.

Community-driven development (CDD) reliably delivers locally prioritized public infrastructure and services, often at a lower cost and with less leakage than traditional government-managed projects, and it has proven particularly effective in challenging contexts affected by institutional fragility, conflict, and violence.

Spark Microgrants marked 15 years in 2025, reaching over 1.2 million people across 1,375 villages and supporting communities to lead their own development. In 2025, we expanded to 270 new villages, supported 378 community-designed projects, and saw strong participation, leadership, and locally driven impact. As governments like Rwanda adopt this approach at national scale, Spark is helping unlock a future where communities are not recipients of development, but the drivers of it. Read our 2025 annual report here.

We are fifteen years into moving grant funds to low-capital villages through direct transfers and ensuring women and men, young and old, have decision-making power over local initiatives.

In April, Spark’s M&E team published the 2024 Annual Impact Report, showcasing how the FCAP leads to livelihood and civic gains across geographies. After just two years of Spark’s FCAP, average household asset values have grown by 249%, and household savings increased by 160%.

Amidst significant changes in global development financing from Western nations, Spark hosted a roundtable with sector leaders in Oxford, UK, to discuss how to shape the sector moving forward. The conversation highlighted new research results on the effectiveness of development and models that yield long-term versus short-term impacts.

The women of the Nyakazenga village in Rwanda are working together to drive their own success. After just two months of training on collective action and financial management through Spark’s Facilitated Collective Action Process (FCAP), a group of women in the Nyakazenga village of Rwanda launched a sewing business specializing in handmade table decorations for living rooms..

At the end of 2024, Spark hosted a memorable gathering to mark the successful conclusion of Phase I of the Advancing Citizen Engagement (ACE) project—our first national pilot initiative launched in partnership with the Government of Rwanda and the World Bank. This event celebrated the remarkable progress achieved through the pilot and brought together key stakeholders, including representatives from the Government of Rwanda, district mayors, and participants from the Facilitated Collective Action Process (FCAP)

In 2024, Spark celebrated reaching over one million people since our founding. Now, we’re setting our aims higher with a new strategy to reach an additional one million lives over the next three years. We envision the decentralization of aid to the village level so that every community can determine their own development.

On November 27th, heavy rains triggered devastating mudslides and floods in the upper region of Bulambuli, resulting in significant loss of life, displacement of families, and destruction of homes. 27 communities that Spark works with were affected. In these communities, dozens of lives were lost, and more were hospitalized. Families lost homes, livestock, and vital infrastructure, and many are being relocated to resettlement camps outside of the flood zone.