Sharing the Mic

How we move from “including” local voices to building global platforms that actually belong to them, too

There are rooms where the future of child welfare gets discussed. Zoom rooms and conference ballrooms. Panel stages. Breakout sessions with laminated name tags and swag bags and coffee. Webinars with a hundred attendees and a Q&A no one has time for. Podcasts where the host says “we’re honored to have you” and then asks the guest to summarize their entire context in sixty seconds. And in so many of those rooms, whether physical or virtual, Global North people still outnumber Global South people, often by quite a lot.

Not because local leaders don’t exist.
Not because they don’t have expertise.
Not because they don’t have something to say.

And yes, a big part of the barrier includes travel, visas, logistics and money. But sometimes it’s also because the table was built in a way that assumes they won’t be there. Here’s the part I want to say with honesty and without cynicism: we are trying. And it is getting better. More organizations are paying attention now than they were five or ten years ago. More panels have at least one local leader on them. More donors are asking better questions about local perspectives. More conferences are at least attempting to diversify who’s on stage. And in our work, we are doing better at getting our allies into those rooms, into seats at those tables, and making space for them in those conversations.

That matters. Progress is real. And also: it’s not enough. Because “better than before” can still be a long way from “truly shared power.”

The global conversation is missing the most important data

Hear me clearly: it’s not just about giving our local allies a chance, or the space - which we should, and which they deserve. It’s because both sides are missing out, even the side with the resources. When local allies and partners are absent from the rooms where strategies are shaped, decisions drift toward what sounds right to outsiders rather than what may be right on the ground. The conversations are then literally deprived of insight and input they need.

A good friend of mine who is a leader in a local context had a chance to be in some of those rooms. Do you know what he told me about his first time getting to be at “that table?” He said “you people (Global North leaders) have a lot to learn from people like me.” He said it kindly, but it was a ‘speaking truth in love’ moment that I’ve never forgotten.

Local people carry knowledge you cannot download from a report:

• The gap between policy language and district-level reality

• The unspoken norms that make an intervention work or quietly doom it to failure

• The tradeoffs families are actually weighing, and what “support” really means in that context

• The power dynamics inside community systems (including the ones outsiders accidentally reinforce because we’re not aware of them)

• What children and youth will tell you when they trust you - and what they won’t

It’s not that the people who get into the room most often have nothing to contribute. It’s that our contribution becomes risky when we confuse access with authority. Sometimes we’re not leading because we’re right, we’re leading because we were the ones who got handed the microphone.

We need more, not because we’re trying to be “nice” but because we’re trying to get it right

Care reform isn’t a Global North-led project with local implementation, and most of us truly don’t want it to be. Most of us know that it’s the slow, stubborn work of building systems where children can belong in families and where prevention is real, where kinship care is supported, where foster care is safe, where residential care is truly last resort, where reunification is resourced, where local capacity is not treated as optional, but is recognized as critical. We will not get there on our expertise alone, because no one sees clearly from far away. So yes: we are making progress. And yes: we need more. Put simply, letting more perspectives, more voices, more expertise into these rooms makes ALL of us better.

For some of us, “more” will mean a deeper commitment than we’ve been willing to make so far. It might mean a commitment that includes (gasp) carving out actual room in our budgets so local partners can come to us.

Sharing the mic is not charity. It’s collaboration.

When we bring local leaders, youth, care leavers and caregivers into global spaces as peers: presenters, co-authors, co-hosts, we don’t just “elevate” them. We elevate the entire quality of the work. Because global conversations need:

• Contextual intelligence

• Lived expertise

• Diverse problem-solving instincts

• Accountability from the communities affected

• Honest critique of Western assumptions and incentives

In other words: we need the people closest to the work present where decisions are shaped, as co-architects. If our organizations truly believe in locally led change, this is one of the most practical places to prove it.

What it looks like to actually share the platform

Here are tangible ways to do this without slipping into “invite them for five minutes and call it equity.”

1) Co-authorship, not “quotes”

If you’re writing a blog, an article, a book chapter, a case study, don’t just interview local partners and sprinkle in a few quotes. Write it with them.

• Co-write the outline

• Co-own the framing

• Share editorial power

• Split the byline

• Agree on what won’t be shared publicly

• Share proceeds or honoraria when the work generates revenue

If your platform benefits from their expertise, their expertise should benefit from your platform.

2) Co-presenting as the default

If you are presenting “a model” that exists in a local context, it should be almost unthinkable to present it alone. Build conference sessions and webinars as joint presentations:

• One voice from the “resourcer side,” one voice from the “implementer side”

• Shared speaking time

• Shared slide ownership

• Shared Q&A authority

And when the organizer says, “We don’t have the budget to support that,” interrogate the values behind that reaction.

3) Co-hosting podcasts and webinars

A powerful move is not just bringing someone on as a guest, it’s bringing them on as a co-host for a series. Let local leaders:

• Shape the questions

• Choose the topics

• Invite other guests

• Correct narratives in real time

• Speak to their peers across countries and regions

If you run a platform, Substack, podcast, webinar series, ask yourself: Who holds the keys to the guest list? That’s where power hides.

4) Fund the seat, not just the invite

If we want Global South partners in important global rooms, we must consider funding:

• Travel

• Visas

• Accommodation

• Conference fees

• Per diem

• (All the things your org provides when you travel to present and attend conferences)

And if you want to keep saying “we couldn’t afford it,” you should at least be honest and finish the sentence: “We couldn’t afford it and still keep everything else exactly the way we like it.” Because for some of us, the shift won’t happen until we treat “local partners at the table” as a line item as normal as Wi-Fi, staff development, or branding. Here’s an interesting test: ask yourself, do you currently have items in your budget that (1) allow you to travel to important convenings related to your work, and (2) allow you to travel to the local context to visit local leaders and see the work? I’m guessing probably yes to both. Do you have items in your budget to help get those same local leaders to those important convenings? Or to come to you? I’m guessing perhaps not.

5) Bring youth and caregivers, not only directors

If all we ever platform are executive directors, we’re still filtering reality through hierarchy. Some of the most essential voices in care reform are:

• Youth with lived experience of separation, reintegration, kinship care, foster care, and residential care

• Foster and kin caregivers navigating real constraints

• Frontline social workers and community case managers

• Community leaders who actually hold social influence where families live

The global conversation needs more than “program leadership.” It needs proximity.

6) Share the “rooms” you already access

Many Global North organizations have rooms they can enter easily: donor circles, denominational gatherings, philanthropic networks, university events, policy roundtables. These are doors local partners often can’t open on their own, but we can open many of those doors for them. We can make it normal to say: “I won’t keynote this unless my colleague can co-present.” “I want our local partner on the panel, and we’ll cover costs.” “If you want the story, you need the storyteller.”

A gut-check for Global North organizations

If you want to know whether you’re sharing the mic or staging inclusion, ask:

• Who chose the topic?

• Who framed the problem?

• Who controls the platform?

• Who has the final editorial say?

• Who gets paid?

• Who gets credit?

• Who gets invited back next time?

And maybe the most revealing: when local partners disagree with you publicly, do you make room, or do you manage the narrative?

The point is not perfection. It’s direction and honesty.

We don’t have to pretend we’ve already arrived, and we can certainly celebrate how far we have come. But we do have to stop patting ourselves on the back for small steps if the structure still guarantees Global North dominance in the rooms that shape the field so that we keep striving for more.

So if you have a mic, share it.
If you have a stage, widen it.
If you have access, open the door.
If you have a budget, make the line item.

The global conversation about the Global South should never happen without the Global South. And the future we’re trying to build (the bridge we keep talking about) will only hold if the people on both sides are designing it together.