Trusted Local Actors, Systemic Constraints

For decades, conflict, instability, humanitarian emergencies, and natural disasters have uprooted and impoverished tens of millions of people in Myanmar, with millions seeking shelter in Thailand, Bangladesh, and other nearby countries.

Communities that can’t rely on the state for essential services have built their own local organizations and systems. Although trusted and uniquely able to access their communities, they remain under-resourced, isolated, and constrained by a fragmented, top-down aid system.

Our Strategic Priorities

Community Partners International (CPI)’s 2026–2028 Strategic Plan outlines our ambition to nurture and strengthen resilient and sustainable local health and humanitarian organizations, systems, and services.

CPI will:

1. Advance authentic localization: Support local actors to lead through technical coaching, funding pathways, and system tools, with local organizations owning data, budgets, and decisions. Focus, where possible, on local-to-local strengthening.
2. Nurture mesh network health systems: Support decentralized webs of local organizations, clinics, health workers, and referral sites that can reroute care, share data, and keep essential services flowing when one part falters.
3. Build trust with and between local organization partners through timely, transparent information-sharing, predictable financing, structured cooperation, and joint decision-making.

Rebalancing Power in Aid Systems

CPI acts as a connector, facilitator, and champion of local leadership, providing technical support and quality assurance while bridging local organizations, donors, and policymakers. We shift decision-making power to those closest to the challenges while ensuring compliance and accountability. We are often first funders, investing where others hesitate, and we balance accountability with flexibility. For CPI, local organizations are not subcontractors delivering someone else’s vision; they are architects of their solutions.

By 2028, our ambition is to connect 200 local organizations into coordinated networks reaching 7 million people with quality, equitable, and sustainable health services.

> Download the 2026-2028 Strategic Plan