Collaborative design: A practical guide

This toolkit provides a practical and accessible guide for collaborative design, offering a five phase roadmap (empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test) to help civil society organizations co create solutions with communities, partners, and donors. Developed through a global collaborative effort and validated by real world testing from YCDF Ethiopia, it combines human centered design and co creation principles with practical tools, prompts, and resources. The guide is designed to be simple, flexible, and inclusive, enabling local organizations, especially small and medium CSOs, to systematically design programs that are context driven, participatory, and aligned with community needs while strengthening ownership, relevance, and collaboration.