Abstract

In the life cycle of an international non-government organization, it happens sometimes that it devolves into a locally-based non-government organization. The purpose of this paper is to document the potential advantages as well as disadvantages of this process known as "localization" or "devolution". The research took place in Senegal among the main stakeholders of the NGO community that are the international non-government organizations, the local non-government organizations and the community itself. Data were collected from face-to-face interviews with open-ended questions from a sample of 25 people, most of them pertaining to the EELS stakeholders whose ages range from 18 to 65. Of the sample five were females. The majority of the respondents were either current or former staff, current and former executives, clients, partners and sponsoring organizations reprehensive. Other informants were the representatives of organizations that have experienced localization efforts. Questionnaires were sent to informants that were not available for face-to-face interviews especially to four US citizens overseas who had, in the past years, assumed leadership roles in the EELS. One questionnaire was also sent to a residing national who was not available for a face-to-face interview. Most of the subjects were found locally and were interviewed directly by the researcher himself. The interviews were conducted mostly in French, only four interviews were done in English and three interviews in Wolof (the national language).The findings, in addition to providing a full range of advantages as well as drawbacks, resulted in a checklist of some preconditions found to be critical to the likelihood of a successful localization.

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