About Us

Since 1990, ILS LEDA has been working in 31 countries and 79 local territories around the world through several programmes funded by the European Union, the United Nations, the Italian Cooperation and the private sector, supporting more than 2000 stakeholders in promoting their sustainable territorial development.

Under this framework, the development of 41 territorial value chains was facilitated in 16 countries; furthermore, 53 self-sustained local economic development agencies (LEDA) or similar participatory structures were established in 16 territories, a global network of 47 LEDAs was activated and is currently operating, and more than 1000 institutions and organisations were supported and trained on local/territorial economic development approach and operations.

What We Do

ILS LEDA functions as a “clinic” for the territory, a centre that addresses its key contemporary problems and challenges, by analysing, diagnosing and resolving them. What are the most common developmental problems at territorial level?

Inequality
Poverty and unemployment
Gender disparity
Lack of cohesion or social dialogue
Poor competitiveness
Suboptimal exploitation of local resources
Impediments in developing local businesses, and farm units (especially the small ones)
Migration
Poor resilience in facing disasters, conflicts, epidemic, environmental degradation and climate change

Furthermore, ILS LEDA supports local, national and international organisations in improving territorial economies, with the aim of achieving competitive, inclusive, resilient, cohesive, and sustainable development, in accordance to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations.

In particular, ILS LEDA provides the following services:

Building democratic governance
Assessing local resources and economic potential
Improving services for local economy
Supporting the members of its international LEDA Network
Territorial marketing
Capacity building

In the past decades, we have provided our services to local actors in the following countries: Albania, Argentina, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Colombia, Colombia, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, India, Italy, Kazakhstan, Lebanon, Morocco, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Palestine, Russia, Senegal, Serbia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Tunisia, Uruguay, Uzbekistan

Our Mission and Vision

Our mission is to spread awareness about the importance of local development as an instrument for making the world more liveable, with more social justice and less inequalities, through inspiring and helping people in finding the most appropriate and sustainable solutions adapted to their socio-economic and cultural contexts.

Our goal is to be one of the world’s leading providers of services for sustainable and human local economic development, through creating and customising unique and user-friendly participatory solutions of superior quality and value.

Our Focus

Our proposal for a Local Economic Development (LED), which is competitive, inclusive, resilient, cohesive, and sustainable, focuses on the following core pillars:

Economic development as an instrument for improving people’s living conditions;
The valorisation of local resources as a fundamental element of territorial economic development;
The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, as the compass for complying with economic, social and environmental development needs;
The human being as the main actor of development, and, accordingly, people’s participation in the overall development cycle;
Gender equality as an essential element for high-quality and long-term development;
The development of value chains as the backbone of development;
The empowerment of small and medium enterprises and cooperatives and their networking;
Democratic governance processes favouring public-private partnerships of local stakeholders as an essential element to drive local economic development processes;
Self-sustainable and comprehensive service systems as the best instruments for providing support to LED processes, as for operationalising the strategies;
Linkage between national and local policies, for facilitating effective responses of local needs.

Added Values

Our added values are:

A long term experience working on Local Economic Development, linking competitiveness, inclusiveness, resilience, cohesion and socio-environmental sustainability
Favouring an effective achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) at local level
A comprehensive approach connecting national and local policies, economic and socio-cultural development, economic competitiveness and socio-environmental sustainability
Expertise in building democratic governance mechanisms for local economic development, such as Territorial Public-Private Alliances, and Local Economic Development Agencies
The high value of being empathetic with local actors, always considered as strategic partners during the planning and implementation of the actions
Facilitation of Territorial Partnerships at international level

Our Tools

PASC (Potential and Actors for Sustainable Competitiveness): identifies the proper main local assets (actors and resources) as drivers of territorial development.
RESCO (Resources for Economic Sustainable Competitiveness): assesses performance, potential and obstacles of the local value chains, and builds participatory development strategies and plans.
TESSY (Territorial Service SYstem Assessment and Solutions): assesses the matching demands and supplies of services and identifies proper solutions for building tailored mechanisms for assuring effective and efficient service support.
PROLEDA (Promotion of Local Economic Development Agencies): enables the design of a LEDA and assesses its feasibility on the medium-long term.
TEMA (Territorial Marketing): identifies the territorial personality, based on which it builds tailored territorial image/communication strategies and tools.

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