CDA Collaborative Learning Projects (CDA) is an international non-profit organization headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts. CDA improves the effectiveness of peacebuilding, development, humanitarian organizations and corporations working in fragile and conflict-affected contexts. Through its unique collaborative learning approach, CDA combines rigorous analysis and evidence-based methodologies to produce useful tools and guidance for practitioners and policymakers alike. In strengthening the work of its partners, CDA contributes to positive, systematic, and lasting change for people and communities, while also influencing policy and practice across the sectors in which it works..
CDA’s work is driven by the same two fundamental beliefs it was founded on twenty-five years ago:
– The perspectives and abilities of people affected by conflict are essential to constructive engagements in fragile and conflict-affected contexts.
– Context matters: Effectiveness depends on a deep understanding of and adaptation to the range of complex local dynamics of communities engaged with social change.
Providing evidence-based approaches to today’s complex challenges is what CDA does best: it creates opportunities to identify good practices, reflects on learning from fragile and conflict contexts, documents the evidence, and develops practical tools. One of CDA’s collaborative learning projects, Stopping as Success: planning for success from start to exit, for instance, examines successful and responsible transitions of international NGOs in support of locally-led development and peacebuilding.