This article discusses the perceptions of Solomon Island mentors and regional administrators of a Solomon Islands aid-funded school leadership professional learning and development intervention. The focus is on contextualisation, used here as a broad term to refer to the adoption of ways of understanding, thinking and working recognisable and coherent within local practice. The scope of the article includes the significance of the configuration of relationships between delivery partners, the power of cause-based motivation, programme delivery protocols and ways of understanding successful outcomes. Using data drawn from two perspectives in a multi-facetted programme construction and delivery model, the article offers some provocations regarding the potential of re-framing relationships and practices in aid-funded development programmes in educational leadership and beyond