• HLP Organizers

Brief Report on Horizontal Learning Clinic in Bangladesh

BACKGROUND It was decided at the Local Governance Initiative and Network (LOGIN) Constituent Assembly held from 2-4 July 2013, that ‘Innovative ways of capacity building of elected representatives’ need to be learnt through methods beyond the conventional ones. To do so LOGIN requested The Horizontal Learning Program of Bangladesh to offer its members an opportunity to visit, experience and learn from this widely implemented, multi- stakeholder initiative which enables capacity building of local elected bodies through peer learning.

ABOUT HORIZONTAL LEARNING PROGRAM (HLP) The Horizontal Learning Program (HLP) is an outcome based peer- to-peer learning platform for elected bodies at the rural level. It was initiated in 2007 by the Local Government Division of the Ministry of Local Government, Development and Cooperatives; Government of Bangladesh with support from the Water and Sanitation Program of the World Bank (WSP), Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and other development partners. Since then HLP has been engaged in by more than 500 locally elected bodies in more than 25 districts to benefit more than 7 million people. The initiative is presently supported by 32 development partners and is being extended to cover a total of 2000 local government institutions (LGIs). HLP has a well-organized, systematic, step by step process to facilitate structured peer learning across local governments through appreciation-connection-adaptation and replication that is extremely adaptable and lends itself well to up-scaling. So far more than 100 good practices on water supply and sanitation, governance, primary health, livelihood, primary education etc. have been identified and learnt and replicated through this horizontal learning process. It is now included within the National Framework on Capacity Building for Union Parishads, the lowest tier of the local government institution in Bangladesh, which has been signed by eight donor agencies. A sub- set of these good practices have been included in the national basic training curricula for local governments and have contributed to the revision of government orders and adoption of central government strategies. Read More