Supporting communities rather than replacing them: the evolution of community-led response in Syria

In many crises around the world, local communities demonstrate a remarkable capacity to organise themselves and respond to challenges, even amid weak public services and limited resources. In times of crisis, social solidarity networks are often at the forefront of addressing daily needs, whether through supporting the most marginalised families or organising collective efforts to improve local living conditions.

This reality has prompted humanitarian practitioners to rethink the very design of humanitarian responses. Rather than focusing exclusively on programmes planned and implemented by organisations, growing attention has turned to humanitarian responses built upon the initiatives and capacities that already exist within crisis-affected communities. Among these approaches, the community-led response (CLR) methodology stands out: one grounded in supporting communities’ ability to identify their priorities and organise their collective responses to the challenges they face.

In the Syrian context, this approach has gained increasing importance throughout the long years of conflict, which have profoundly affected economic, social and service conditions across different regions. Faced with mounting pressures, communities themselves began generating initiatives to address the diverse challenges affecting their daily lives. These initiatives became a crucial launchpad for developing humanitarian practices that strengthen community action and support its role in crisis response.

Community initiatives as a promising starting point

Across many Syrian regions, resident-led initiatives have emerged to address issues affecting local realities. In some neighbourhoods, residents organise clean-up campaigns or efforts to rehabilitate deteriorating shared public spaces. In other areas, initiatives take shape to support the most marginalised families or to respond to environmental challenges threatening livelihoods, such as seasonal fires endangering agricultural land or natural resources.

These initiatives reflect the deep-rooted spirit of social solidarity within local communities. They often arise spontaneously from within the community itself, born of a shared sense of responsibility among residents toward their surroundings and one another. When a problem emerges, people begin discussing it in everyday encounters between neighbours or within their social networks, proposing ideas for improvement. Over time, these conversations translate into practical steps: residents begin organising themselves, distributing roles and pooling locally available resources to implement initiatives that address the problem.

This community spirit has been particularly evident during major crises. For instance, when the devastating earthquake struck areas of northern Syria in 2023, many residents immediately mobilised to take part in search and rescue efforts, evacuate the injured and assist affected families. In many cases, volunteer teams formed from within the same community, with neighbours and friends working together to organise rescue efforts and provide support to families who have lost their homes or loved ones. These responses were not the result of prior planning or organised intervention; rather, they were direct expressions of community solidarity, an impulse driving people to help one another.

This same spirit manifests in confronting seasonal fires that affect some agricultural and forested areas of Syria. When fires break out threatening crops and woodlands, residents and farmers cooperate collectively to limit the spread of flames, using simple tools at hand and local knowledge of the surrounding terrain. This is all in the effort to protect the land and properties that serve as the livelihood of many families.

These experiences reveal that community solidarity in Syria is not a phenomenon tied exclusively to organisation-supported initiatives. It is part of the social practices deeply embedded within the community itself. In many cases, organisational interventions come afterward to support or build upon these efforts. It is therefore essential to understand these community initiatives and recognise their role to develop humanitarian approaches that genuinely support community-led response and strengthen communities’ capacity to face challenges.

Supporting community-led initiatives rather than replacing them

Building on these local initiatives, local organisations in Syria have begun exploring new ways to support community action rather than supplant it. In this context, the role of humanitarian actors shifts from directly implementing projects to facilitating processes that enable communities to develop their own initiatives. This typically begins through dialogue with community members themselves to understand the challenges and opportunities available to address them. Through these discussions, community members can identify their priorities and develop ideas for collective initiatives that respond to their real needs. They can then move on to organising themselves to implement these initiatives, drawing on local resources, volunteer efforts, and the social relationships that form the foundation of collective action.

For example, in one neighbourhood, community discussion sessions revealed that elderly residents were struggling to access health services. In response, individuals took the initiative to form a local volunteer team to organise regular home visits and coordinate with local pharmacies to secure essential medications, drawing on the social networks within the neighbourhood. The organisation’s role was limited to providing modest support to cover some supplies, without intervening in the management of the initiative. This helped preserve community ownership and strengthen its sustainability.

In some cases, organisations can offer flexible, complementary support that reinforces community efforts and helps implement self-designed initiatives. This may include small grants, material resources, or limited technical assistance, while ensuring that core decisions remain in the hands of the community. This is essential to safeguard the continuity of these initiatives and ensure that they remain closely rooted in people’s actual needs.

Local organisations play a pivotal role in enabling these approaches. Their proximity to communities and deep understanding of local context allow them to facilitate dialogue among community members and encourage the development of initiatives. In this framework, facilitators organise community discussion sessions in a structured manner: beginning with the invitation of diverse community groups (men, women, youth and elders), followed by an open discussion allowing everyone to voice the challenges at hand. The dialogue is then guided toward identifying shared priorities, generating collective ideas, and ultimately agreeing on a feasible initiative, with roles and responsibilities clearly defined. Through this participatory process, practical initiatives take shape that reflect community needs and strengthen its capacity for self-organisation.

As these initiatives begin to take form, organisations can provide flexible, complementary support that strengthens implementation without replacing the community’s role. This support reinforces the existing self-driven efforts, whether through volunteer work, local knowledge, or the social networks that communities rely on to organise their initiatives.

In this way, organisations do not replace community forces; rather, they play an enabling role that strengthens them and enhances their effectiveness. This contributes to responses that are more sustainable and more closely rooted in the local context.

An emerging community of practice and a new approach

As community-led initiatives expanded across Syria, the importance of sharing experiences among humanitarian practitioners became increasingly apparent. Spaces for dialogue began to form, bringing together practitioners from different organisations to discuss and exchange practical experiences related to supporting community initiatives. These professional meetings and workshops offer opportunities to collectively reflect on how to develop humanitarian practices suited to the Syrian local reality, to extract lessons learned from diverse experiences, and to explore the most effective approaches for supporting community initiatives without undermining their autonomy or weakening the community’s ownership of them.

In this context, the Center for Civil Society and Democracy organised a reflective workshop in Damascus from 30 September to 4 October 2025, focused on mutual aid and the CLR methodology. The workshop brought together 30 participants from 12 organisations, all working in the humanitarian field, alongside local organisations working directly with communities in different parts of Syria. The workshop was held following a flexible pilot period that allowed organisations to explore and support existing local initiatives.

The workshop was led by Syrian and international facilitators, who shared their experience applying this methodology across various contexts and discussed its core principles. This includes strengthening community ownership of the process, building trust, maintaining flexibility in response, and relying on local resources. Practical tools for supporting community initiatives were also reviewed, including structured community discussion sessions, participatory prioritisation tools, micro-grant models, and simplified community monitoring mechanisms that allow communities to evaluate the progress of their initiatives autonomously.

Among the workshop’s key areas of focus were: first, how to identify initiatives already underway without disrupting them, and instead building on their work through direct, joint field assessment and analysis; second, thinking through how to amplify impact by providing requested training, nurturing relationships, or offering complementary material support to what already exists; and third, advancing the CLR methodology so that it becomes a reference model for the humanitarian, development and peacebuilding sectors.

The workshop provided participants the opportunity to share their field experiences working with local communities in Syria, discuss cases in which initiatives emerged from within communities themselves, and reflect on the role organisations can play in supporting these initiatives without undermining community ownership. The discussion also touched on the challenges of implementing initiatives, including institutional and funding constraints that limit organisations’ ability to support small-scale, flexible initiatives.

Thanks to this continued engagement, a community of practitioners is taking shape within the Syrian context, working to develop and strengthen the application of the CLR methodology. This reflects a notable shift in how interventions are designed and implemented. They are no longer limited to responding to immediate needs but are increasingly oriented toward supporting the community’s role as the primary actor in identifying priorities and leading solutions. This direction opens space for more flexible and sustainable models, grounded in the exchange of experiences, skills and knowledge, thereby consolidating and expanding this approach within the Syrian context.

The group’s work continues through 2026 with the aim of broadening the search for existing community initiatives, finding innovative ways to support them, assessing and refining working mechanisms in Syria, and sharing lessons learned with civil society groups and influencers.

For example, the experience of SEEN, a project launched by Action for Humanity, exemplifies a pioneering practical model for empowering local communities. The project’s actual implementation began in Idlib in 2024, before gradually expanding to cover several areas on the strength of its achieved success and the growing demand for this approach. Initiatives under SEEN included direct infrastructure interventions (such as road rehabilitation, lighting and sanitation), education and health services, alongside environmental and economic initiatives, achieving tangible impact on people’s lives. The project has sustained itself since 2024 through its reliance on knowledge transfer and capacity-building for local facilitators and volunteer teams, enabling communities to manage and develop initiatives autonomously through maintenance, expansion and replication in other areas. This approach also helped establish a scalable model, one that extended beyond implementation to foster a culture of community action and consolidate the role of individuals as initiators and agents of change. All these factors contributed to the project’s sustainability, transforming interventions from temporary responses into long-term development pathways.

Challenges and opportunities for the future

Applying the methodology outlined above in a complex context such as Syria presents several challenges. On the one hand, organisations face difficulties stemming from funding systems that tend to favour pre-planned projects with predetermined outcomes, whereas community-led initiatives require greater flexibility in identifying, supporting and developing them. On the other hand, some administrative and institutional procedures occasionally limit organisations’ ability to support the small-scale or fast-moving initiatives that arise within communities.

In addition, humanitarian workers need to develop new skills and working approaches suited to community-led initiatives. This approach requires a shift away from project implementation and toward the facilitation of community initiatives themselves. Building trust and relationships with local communities also requires sustained time and effort, a challenge in humanitarian environments characterised by rapid change and significant operational pressures.

Yet despite all of this, the accumulated experiences in Syria suggest that supporting community initiatives contributes to developing humanitarian responses that are more closely connected to local realities. It is increasingly clear that initiatives originating from within communities tend to reflect a nuanced understanding of the challenges residents face. When supported in ways that preserve community ownership, they can strengthen communities’ self-capacity to address challenges with flexibility and develop more sustainable local solutions. This manifests in practice through communities’ growing ability to self-organise, collectively identify priorities, manage available resources more effectively, and in the continuity and further development of some interventions even after external support has concluded.

Sara Bahsass is a humanitarian and development specialist in Syria. Her work focuses on cross-sectoral programming, coordination, stakeholder engagement, and inclusive approaches.