In November 2025, UNDP SDG Local Action released its new publication “Recommendations for Municipal Work with Local Communities,” a practical guide designed to support municipalities in building stronger, more inclusive, and more collaborative relationships with communities. The publication brings together methodologies, tools, and insights that help local governments create participatory, equitable, and sustainable processes rooted in the realities of their territories.
The objectives
The guide was developed with four core objectives:
- Strengthen local government capacities to design and implement community-driven initiatives.
- Promote gender-responsive and differential approaches that recognise the diverse needs and leadership of women, youth, older adults, indigenous peoples, and other historically excluded groups.
- Provide clear methodological tools for territorial diagnosis, community engagement, population characterization, participatory planning, and inclusive communication.
- Support sustainable transformation processes that reinforce local leadership, community autonomy, and long-term, people-centered development.
The approach
The publication presents a comprehensive approach built on several interconnected components:
- Participatory territorial reading: through tools such as participant observation, interviews, focus groups, and life stories, local governments can gain a deeper understanding of community dynamics, social relations, identities, challenges, and aspirations.
- Population characterization: this step makes visible the diversity of groups, levels of vulnerability, living conditions, and forms of participation present in the territory, ensuring that actions are relevant, inclusive and just.
- Capacity development: the guide emphasizes continuous training, peer learning, recognition of local knowledge, and the strengthening of organizations and networks. It places special attention on women’s leadership, safety, autonomy, and economic empowerment.
- Gender-responsive and differential planning: planning is conceived as a collective process in which community voices actively shape goals, activities, and indicators. The guide advocates for accessible meeting times, safe participation, childcare options, and facilitation that values horizontal dialogue.
- Inclusive communication and organizational clarity: clear roles, equitable distribution of responsibilities, respectful language, and culturally appropriate communication tools are essential to building trust and sustaining participation.
- Community spaces: the guide highlights the importance of physical spaces where communities can gather, collaborate, and organize—spaces that foster belonging, dialogue, and shared ownership of local processes.
- Monitoring, evaluation, and learning: the publication promotes participatory and qualitative monitoring that captures changes in leadership, relationships, empowerment, and social cohesion, going beyond traditional quantitative indicators.
Key achievements illustrated through real experiences
The guide includes inspiring cases from cities that have implemented transformative community initiatives:
- Bogotá’s Home-Based Care Programme (Colombia): strengthening the local care system, recognizing the work of caregivers, expanding participation and driving cultural change around co-responsibility and autonomy.
- Biciclando Circular Economy Centre in Hermosillo (Mexico): creating dignified employment for women as environmental operators, promoting recycling in underserved areas, and combining digital tools with community-based environmental management.
- Solar-powered Cold Rooms Project in Rourkela (India): reducing food waste, increasing cooperative incomes, promoting women’s entrepreneurship, and integrating green technologies and sustainable logistics.
A call to collective action
The guideline concludes with a clear message: building fair, equitable and sustainable communities requires the active collaboration of municipalities, organized groups, cooperatives, local leaders and citizens.
This publication is a starting point—an invitation to strengthen participatory processes and deepen the transformative potential of local action.
Download the guidelines in English here