The world needs locally led emergency response
Here’s how the Change Fund is fueling the aid system's most effective local interventions
Kaseyni is a port town on the shores of Lake Albert, one of Africa’s largest lakes. Across the water from Uganda in this area of Ituri province, eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), rivers stocked with fish stripe the landscape. The soil is the colour of the Robusta coffee that’s grown there. Rolling green hills mark the horizon.
For decades, conflict has also marked Ituri province, affecting Kaseyni and millions of people in eastern DRC.
“We have been living the crisis for a long time,” says Jonas Habimana, a self-described proud Congolese.
“For many more than 20 years, the province has been affected by armed conflict with many displaced people. There are many people who have been living displacement for 10, 15, 20 years,” he says.
As the conflict shifts and reignites, more communities are uprooted or repeatedly displaced.
Jonas co-founded Bureau d’Informations, Formations, Echanges et Recherches pour le Développement, or BIFERD, in 2004 to support people affected by conflict and crises across the DRC.
As the organisation’s Executive Director, Jonas sees overwhelming needs in communities and the distressing numbers that explain the situation. Across the DRC, 27 million people are in urgent need of aid in one of the world’s most complex and protracted humanitarian crises.
Without access to clean water and sanitation, children contract preventable diseases like cholera and mpox. Families endure days without enough food. Schools crumble, becoming casualties of the conflict that has killed approximately 6 million people, with 7,000 deaths in 2025 alone.
In Ituri, North Kivu, South Kivu, and other areas in eastern DRC, violence has displaced more than 7.3 million people.
“Our presence was like an opportunity, because when IRC, Mercy Corps, OXFAM, IOM, Trócaire and those funders were ending their programmes, the attacks and conflict in the zones around had been registered, and many people had also been displaced in this period,” Jonas says. “We arrived in the zone while no NGOs were there responding.”
That’s why Jonas and his team flagged the situation as a crisis to NEAR’s Change Fund and rushed to respond to the escalating needs.
Within 72 hours of the Change Fund acknowledging Jonas’ warning and declaring it a crisis, BIFERD applied for a Change Fund grant to launch a response.
Once a crisis is declared and pre-approved NEAR members apply for a grant to respond, the Change Fund’s locally led Oversight Body reviews the applications and awards a grant within days.
Jonas says that timeline is unheard of among other funds.
“For example, here in DRC, the pooled fund can activate a crisis, and the people can be applying, but the feedback will be coming sometimes one month, two months, three months after, when the situation has changed and when people have been seriously suffering,” Jonas explains.
Forty-eight hours after BIFERD submitted its grant application to the Change Fund, it was approved.
And within 14 days of the crisis declaration, BIFERD was distributing life-saving supplies in Ituri and surrounding areas in eastern DRC.
Poised to respond
With 1,500 hygiene kits, jerrycans for water, and menstrual supplies, BIFERD initiated its support to individuals and families displaced by the fighting. The team fixed water systems, built latrines and distributed Plumpy’Nut to children suffering from malnutrition. Blankets, cooking supplies and clothes went to people who fled their homes and took refuge in camps for the internally displaced.
Caption: A water supply system BIFERD’s team installed during their response in eastern DRC. Credit: BIFERD
When BIFERD’s team saw students trying to learn outside because their schools had been demolished, they extended their efforts to rehabilitating the buildings and providing books.
As a national organisation, BIFERD had focal points in Ituri. It could rapidly assess needs and respond. BIFERD used its team and sourced supplies from trusted vendors who were based in the area and familiar with emergency response.
Although large international organisations were working across the DRC, that wasn’t enough.
“The presence of organisations is an issue, but also covering existing gaps is another issue,” Jonas says. “We have many NGOs at the country level, but depending on how big the crisis is, the needs are still very high — higher than the actual response in this context.”
And as conflicts flare around the world, Jonas wonders how aid donors will continue to respond to the DRC.
“Why? It’s like DRC is a forgotten crisis,” Jonas says, exasperated. “And Ituri province is really a forgotten province where there are many needs in terms of humanitarian assistance.”
Funding follows trust
The problem that Jonas raises is well-known within the humanitarian sector: soaring needs, dwindling funding, and chronic delays in getting what resources are available to the people most affected.
Local and national organisations, which are in the area when emergencies hit and remain after international organisations shift their support to other crises, receive a minuscule portion of global aid funding.
Across the humanitarian system, only 3.6% of all funding went directly to local and national organisations in 2024, according to data from the Global Humanitarian Assistance Report.
These organisations are falsely labeled as “risky,” “lacking capacity,” and “unable to deliver.” In short, the traditional aid system withholds its trust from them.
Extensive donor requirements make it difficult for local and national organisations to apply for and receive funding. International organisations are better positioned to secure traditional grants, but their responses drain large portions of the funding before it reaches communities and add layers of complexity.
And that drastically delays emergency interventions.
The time from crisis declaration to response in the current aid system can vary widely. It can take several weeks to several months to mobilise resources and implement a response. That’s in an emergency, when the stakes are measured by people’s lives.
A better way
BIFERD’s response — and the emergency interventions of 29 Change Fund grantees across the world’s most complex crises — counter the traditional aid system’s lengthy approach of centralised, top-down funding. Their responses prove that localising humanitarian aid is possible. And more efficient. And more effective.
In 2022, NEAR, supported by some of its 300 members from across the Global South, launched the Change Fund. It was intentionally designed to challenge the ideas that local organisations can’t be trusted to lead responses and can’t be funded quickly or directly.
"We wanted to foster a funding ecosystem that is responsive, adaptable, and equitable, ensuring power and decision-making are localised,” says Falastin Omar, NEAR’s Change Fund Manager.
The Change Fund’s peer-to-peer grantmaking system, governed by an elected Oversight Body of NEAR members, makes that a reality. From crisis declaration to grant approval, Oversight Body members draw on experiences rooted in their work in Global South communities. Those perspectives are critical in approving grants that will be impactful and sustainable for the implementing organisations.
One example: the Centre for Peace and Democracy in Somalia applied for a Change Fund grant, but the proposal didn’t account for sufficient overhead costs. The Oversight Body responded by inviting them to factor that into their budget and revise their application.
“What happens is that most often, civil society organisations are conditioned to just implement,” Oversight Body member for Africa Naomi Tulay-Solanke says. “So we forget about sustainability. We forget about even our own organisation and our own members, how they have to survive.”
Prioritising those members and organisations is the foundation of the Change Fund.
"For the very first time ever in my work experience, I came across a very unique financial solution that is only for the local/national organisations,” says Sumera Javeed, an Oversight Body member for the Asia-Pacific region. “There isn't any hybrid model. There isn't any long and lengthy requirements for the funds disbursement.”
The Change Fund’s application and reporting processes are intentionally simple. And flexibility is a key component of the grants. They are unrestricted, allowing organisations to update their responses based on real-time changes in the emergency.
"Flexibility leads to quality,” Falastin says. “That flexibility allows you to reimagine what's possible. You're not going to achieve quality funding if you're inflexible from the get-go."
The future of aid
Through its three-month emergency response, BIFERD reached more than 104,000 people in eastern DRC, exceeding its goal to support 17,000 people by more than 500%.
BIFERD’s widespread impact is more of a rule for Change Fund grantees than an exception.
"Ninety-nine if not 100% of them supported more people in the end than they committed to,” says Hibak Kalfan, NEAR’s Executive Director.
“It's the flexibility of the grant that has empowered them to be able to support as many people as possible." -Hibak Kalfan, NEAR’s Executive Director
The results from Change Fund grantees refute claims that local and national organisations cannot manage successful, cost-effective programmes.
“The impact we have been making is because, as a national organisation, we are using local people, and the bureaucracy is very low,” Jonas says of BIFERD’s extensive reach.
And at least 70% of BIFERD’s funding goes directly to the communities it serves.
“It's an added value,” Jonas says.
For Hibak, real change in the humanitarian aid sector would mean recognising that added value by believing and investing in local organisations.
"As a system, we stop leading with internationally led solutions, and we start leading with locally led solutions,” Hibak says, outlining her vision. “To me, that's the marker of us being more sustainable and us being more successful."