The Center for Governance and Markets at the University of Pittsburgh hosted Rethinking Aid from the Ground Up: Bottom-Up Approaches to Development Assistance on December 4–5, 2025. The two-day research workshop brought together scholars and practitioners from across disciplines to examine how international development assistance can be reimagined in ways that prioritize community agency, human dignity, and sustainable local empowerment.
Against the backdrop of the elimination of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), participants engaged in in-depth discussions on the limitations of top-down aid models and explored alternative approaches that shift power and resources closer to local communities. Workshop sessions addressed themes including community-led development, accountability and governance, new tools and technologies for local empowerment, and evolving success metrics grounded in beneficiary perspectives. Through paper presentations and structured feedback, the convening fostered collaborative exchange and advanced research aimed at informing more legitimate, effective, and locally driven development practices.