For international donor agencies,

the main challenge in introducing local economic development is to get it moving - and to get it moving quickly. PACA does exactly this. It offers you a clearly defined sequence of activities that give you a visible impact of your LED activities within about half a year. What you do is this:

• You contract an experienced PACA Specialist who will design a PACA roll-out strategy for your programme in close consultation with you and addressing your specific needs and demands. Perhaps you will have to conduct an actual PACA Exercise to prove the concept and to create credibility with local decision makers. Perhaps you get the buy-in of your local counterparts immediately, so that you can launch PACA training for local facilitators immediately. The PACA Specialist will conduct an initial one-week training course that prepares local persons to apply basic PACA techniques. Allow four to eight weeks for the build-up and preparation of the first training course. Consider to involve consultants as trainees (i.e. don't involve government officials only), since they will be keen to deliver PACA -- this gives you a high probability that your LED and PACA effort will become sustainable.
• Your trainees then start practicing their new know-how, conducting initial PACA Exercises in a number of locations. They will identify a number of quickly implementable LED activities. The PACA Specialist will give them remote backstopping, and he will support them directly, at their location, towards the end of the PACA Exercise, when it comes to identifying realistic proposals and players who will champion them.
• Subsequently, the PACA Specialist will conduct follow-up training and provide distance coaching. As your local consultants gain experience, they are invited to join the PACA Community of Practice.