Skill Building and Certification

Developing professional LED staff at the local level is a critical need for most municipalities. To fill this gap, ICMA has developed comprehensive training courses, a workbook on Community-Based Economic Development (CBED), and LED Certification Programs. The LED training and skill building activities help ensure the long-term impact and sustainability of the LED initiatives ICMA has supported.


Developing professional LED staff at the local level is a critical need for most municipalities. To fill this gap, ICMA has developed comprehensive training courses, a workbook on Community-Based Economic Development (CBED), and LED Certification Programs. The LED training and skill building activities help ensure the long-term impact and sustainability of the LED initiatives ICMA has supported.

  • ICMA helped design and delivered a comprehensive LED training course for 10 Serbian municipalities as part of a program to streamline the environment for private investment and enterprise growth and develop LED capacity.
  • In the Russian Far East, ICMA trained more than 150 municipal officials in basic principles of effective municipal economic development, community action planning, business development, and creative marketing.
  • ICMA developed a comprehensive LED Training Curriculum, and established and worked with the Bulgarian Partnership for Economic Development, a consortium of over 50 Bulgarian cities, to design and implement a Certification Program for LED Professionals and a two-level "Ready for Business" Certification Program for municipalities.
  • In Georgia, ICMA conducted two courses on the Principles and Practices of Community-Based Economic Development (CBED), which explored how CBED can integrate the basic principles of economic development with the active involvement of citizens, nongovernmental organizations, community-based organizations, and businesses.
  • ICMA implemented the Local Economic Development (LED) Speaker Series in partnership with the USAID Urban Programs Office. USAID staff and implementers learned from ICMA's member-practitioners about the critical aspects of LED and its applications in developing and transition country contexts with an emphasis on the cross-cutting nature of LED and opportunities for cross-sectoral synergies and collaboration.
  • USAID and ICMA co-sponsored the Local Economic Development in Europe and Eurasia: Strategies that Work workshop to take stock of USAID regional experience with LED and translate it into useful recommendations for future LED programming. ICMA framed, designed, and facilitated a four-day workshop for 60 regional USAID staff and implementing partners to share experience, results, and tools on LED programs and to discuss opportunities for greater synergies between USAID strategic objectives and sectors on LED related programs and projects.