Dear partners and colleagues,

As we begin a new year, it is useful to situate CIVIC’s work in the broader development context shaping delivery today. Across regions, delivery systems are under increasing pressure: resources are constrained, implementation environments are more complex, and institutions are expected to deliver results in settings marked by uncertainty and rapid change. At the same time, many of the actors that make delivery possible on the ground, civil society organizations, social innovators, and community-based institutions, are under acute strain, even as demand for their capabilities continues to grow.

CIVIC operates at this intersection. Effective delivery increasingly depends on how well public institutions can work with the social sector as a core part of implementation, learning, and accountability. Not as an adjunct or afterthought. When designed as part of delivery systems, civic and citizen engagement enables institutions to access local knowledge, identify bottlenecks, adapt programs, and sustain results over time. CIVIC’s focus is therefore on building the enabling architecture—platforms, financing mechanisms, partnerships, and digital tools—that connect civil society and social innovation to government systems and World Bank operations in practical, durable ways. In 2025, CIVIC moved decisively from concept to implementation, translating shared principles into operational platforms that strengthen delivery, reinforce accountability, and support scale across sectors and contexts.

GFF x CIVIC Platform

A defining milestone for CIVIC in 2025 was the launch of the GFF × CIVIC Platform, designed to address a persistent gap in global health delivery: the disconnect between civil society and youth-led action on the ground and the government systems and financing decisions that determine scale and sustainability. Developed in partnership with the Global Financing Facility, the platform creates structured, long-term pathways for civil society and youth organizations to contribute directly to national health priorities, government systems strengthening, and the quality and accountability of health financing across 23 GFF partner countries.

Through a competitive process, two global consortiums were selected under complementary pillars supported by a $10 million investment over two years: Pillar 1 (VOICES), led by PATH with the African Institute for Development Policy (AFIDEP) and the Organization of African Youth (OAY), strengthens civil society engagement and youth leadership to improve the effectiveness and equity of domestic resource mobilization for women’s, children’s, and adolescent health; and Pillar 2 (ALIGN), led by Action Against Hunger with the Emergency Nutrition Network (ENN) and The Youth Café (TYC), focuses on scaling and institutionalizing community-led innovations that improve adolescent health and nutrition outcomes. What differentiates this platform is its architecture: it links social sector capability and innovation to government decision-making, World Bank–supported operations, and a major global health financing mechanism—turning civic action into inputs for policy, financing, and implementation, rather than parallel or project-bound activity.

CIVIC Youth Platform

In parallel, CIVIC advanced the foundations of its Youth Platform, grounded in a strategic recognition that youth engagement is now inseparable from the development challenge of jobs, inclusion, and social stability. Across regions, young people are increasingly visible not only as beneficiaries of development programs, but as drivers of social innovation, political mobilization, and—where institutions fail to respond—protest and unrest. The question for development systems is therefore not whether to engage youth, but how to do so in ways that translate participation into opportunity, voice into influence, and innovation into pathways for employment, entrepreneurship, and institutional renewal.

CIVIC’s approach responds to this challenge by connecting youth-led and youth-serving organizations to government systems, labor market agendas, and World Bank–supported operations—positioning young people as co-creators of solutions rather than episodic consultees. In 2025, this took concrete form through targeted grantmaking, structured dialogue, and applied learning, culminating in the launch of the CIVIC Brazil Youth initiative. Through a formal training program delivered via the World Bank’s Open Learning Campus and integration with existing government engagement mechanisms, the initiative is testing new approaches to collaboration with youth organizations to address inequality and jobs-related challenges, strengthen links with public institutions, and identify practical entry points for youth engagement in WBG-financed programs. Together, these efforts reflect CIVIC’s emerging role as a platform that channels youth agency into delivery systems, supporting employment, inclusion, and social cohesion while strengthening the legitimacy and effectiveness of development action.

Fragility, Conflict, and Violence (FCV)

In 2025, CIVIC also began shaping an approach to engagement in fragile, conflict, and violence (FCV) contexts, responding to a growing recognition that recovery, stabilization, and service delivery in these settings depend heavily on trusted social sector actors and adaptive partnership models. In contexts such as Ukraine, Sudan, and Gaza, the social sector is often central to sustaining basic services, maintaining community trust, and supporting resilience—yet remains weakly connected to public systems, development finance, and longer-term recovery pathways. Through a Commitment to Action launched with the Clinton Global Initiative, CIVIC has begun laying the groundwork for a platform that can help bridge humanitarian response, community-led delivery, and development systems, connecting civil society and social innovation to government institutions and World Bank–supported operations where institutional capacity is most constrained. This work is intentionally being developed as an open, collaborative architecture, and we see significant opportunity for partners and financiers to engage in shaping and resourcing this platform so it can respond effectively to emerging FCV needs while reinforcing accountability, coordination, and delivery over time.

CIVIC Digital

We also advanced CIVIC Digital, grounded in a clear shift in how participation is understood in the digital age. Too often, participation is treated as a feature—something added at the margins of policy, programs, or technology. In practice, it is infrastructure, and today it must be a core component of how Digital Public Infrastructure is conceived and built. As governments digitize at speed, the central question is no longer whether technology shapes citizen–state relationships, but how—and for whom. When digital systems are designed without voice, feedback, and accountability embedded at their core, they risk hard-coding exclusion, mistrust, and fragility into public institutions. CIVIC Digital responds by working with governments, civil society, technologists, and communities to co-create digital and AI-enabled systems that strengthen how institutions listen, learn, and adapt—so participation becomes governance capacity rather than a symbolic exercise.

In 2025, this approach took concrete form through two flagship platforms. In Nairobi, working with the Nairobi City County Government and local partners, CIVIC supported the co-design of a new citywide digital citizen feedback system—developed with civil society, youth, and county departments—to strengthen how citizen input informs service delivery and institutional response. This work took place in a context where recent large-scale youth protests underscored the costs of insufficient engagement and the urgency of rebuilding responsive channels between the city and its residents. In India, through the OpenNyAI Maker Residency with the Government of India and global partners, CIVIC brought together technologists, policymakers, and civil society to reimagine one of the largest feedback systems in the world: India’s national grievance redress system. The focus was not on tools alone, but on redesigning processes and AI-enabled pathways so citizen feedback becomes decision-relevant at scale. Together, these platforms demonstrate CIVIC Digital’s core proposition: moving from episodic consultation to durable civic infrastructure that improves delivery, accountability, and institutional legitimacy.

CIVIC Climate Platform

We also deepened our climate engagement through the CIVIC Climate platform. A critical milestone in this journey was the completion of the Green Accountability Platform, which functioned as a proof of concept for CIVIC’s platform-based approach to systemic civic engagement. Implemented across Bangladesh, Brazil, Cameroon, Mexico, and Senegal, the Platform demonstrated how structured collaboration between civil society, grassroots actors, and public institutions can materially strengthen transparency, inclusion, and accountability in climate finance. Across contexts, CSOs translated community experience into actionable governance reforms: from participatory budgeting and social audits embedded in Union Parishads in coastal Bangladesh; to municipal climate risk mapping and citizen observatories in Cameroon; to community-government social pacts for mangrove governance and just energy transition oversight in Senegal; to Indigenous-led monitoring of carbon markets and REDD+ benefit-sharing in Brazil; and to inclusive policy validation mechanisms amplifying marginalized voices in Mexico. These efforts improved access to climate information, strengthened the quality and usability of climate and budget data, and created practical feedback loops linking communities, governments, and financing actors.

Equally important were the lessons learned—that civic engagement is most effective when embedded within financing and delivery systems rather than operating in parallel; that trans-local networks and communities of practice can aggregate local knowledge into decision-relevant evidence; and that durable impact depends on shared architecture connecting social accountability, public institutions, and development finance. These insights directly informed the design of CIVIC, shaping its emphasis on integrated platforms, system alignment, and scalable partnership models capable of operating across sectors and geographies.

We also had a strong focus on innovation at the intersection of climate and civic technology. Over the summer, in partnership with Climate Collective, we launched the AI × Green Civic Tech Accelerator, supporting a cohort of 20 organizations from 12 countries, developing digital and AI-enabled solutions for climate accountability, environmental governance, and community-led climate action. Through technical assistance, peer learning, and access to a global ecosystem of practitioners, the accelerator strengthened the capacity of civil society and social innovators to apply emerging technologies in ways that are transparent, inclusive, and grounded in real community needs, demonstrating how civic innovation can accelerate climate impact while reinforcing public trust.

New CIVIC Catalysts Call

In Fall 2025, we launched the CIVIC Catalysts Call as a regular convening forum, held every 4–6 weeks, to connect social sector leaders and innovators and system-level implementers across development spaces. The platform brings together civil society leaders, social innovators, funders, and institutional actors to link emerging approaches—such as digital citizen feedback systems and participatory climate governance, with the operational pathways, financing, and institutional actors engaged in delivery. By creating a consistent space for cross-sector exchange, the Catalysts Call supports shared learning, practical collaboration, and clearer connections between innovation and implementation.

Next on the CIVIC Journey

Equally significant in 2025 was the continued transition from the Global Partnership for Social Accountability (GPSA) to CIVIC. A shift shaped by more than a decade of operational learning. GPSA mobilized over $60 million to civil society worldwide and demonstrated the value of social accountability in improving development outcomes. It also surfaced a clear lesson: while project-based grants can generate important results, their impact is often constrained without stronger links to government systems, financing pathways, and institutional incentives.

CIVIC was designed in response to this lesson. In 2025, we consolidated learning from GPSA’s portfolio and translated it into a more integrated, platform-based approach that connects civil society, youth, innovation, and digital engagement directly to World Bank operations and country systems. The Green Accountability Platform exemplifies this transition—moving from stand-alone accountability projects to a structured model that embeds civic monitoring, data, and community-led solutions into climate finance, public systems, and delivery processes. Together, these shifts position CIVIC not as a successor program, but as an evolved alliance—focused on scale, systems integration, and sustained impact.

In parallel, we laid the groundwork for the opening of the CIVIC Multi-Donor Trust Fund (MDTF), which will serve as a core financing mechanism to support the next phase of CIVIC’s platform-based approach. The MDTF is designed to enable pooled, flexible resources that can support system-level collaboration between civil society, social innovators, governments, and World Bank operations across priority themes and geographies. We anticipate launching the fund in the coming months and see strong opportunity for partners and funders to engage early—helping shape, resource, and scale CIVIC platforms in ways that align shared priorities with practical delivery needs.

Our guiding principle remains simple, but increasingly consequential: development is strongest when citizens are heard, communities are empowered, and partnerships are built on trust, transparency, and shared purpose. In today’s context, this is not only a normative statement, it is a practical one. The resilience, effectiveness, and legitimacy of development systems now depend on how well they integrate social sector capability, citizen voice, and institutional learning into delivery at scale.

Looking ahead, CIVIC’s focus is to deepen this integration. In 2026, we will continue to build and strengthen platforms that connect civil society and social innovation to government systems, development finance, and World Bank operations—across sectors and contexts where delivery risks are high and trust matters most. This means moving from pilots to platforms, from engagement as an activity to engagement as infrastructure, and from fragmented efforts to shared architecture that partners can shape, finance, and use together.

None of this is possible in isolation. The next phase of CIVIC is explicitly collaborative. We invite partners and funders to work with us to co-develop, resource, and scale these platforms—bringing together public institutions, the social sector, and development finance around common delivery challenges. Thank you for the collaboration that has brought us this far. We look forward to deepening it in the year ahead, and to building, together, the civic and delivery systems that development now requires.

With warm regards,

Aly Rahim, Program Manager, CIVIC, the World Bank