• Capacity building in organisations

Capacity building in organisations

ODI’s Civil Society Partnerships Programme (CSPP) is designed to enable civil society organisations to use evidence and engage with policy processes more effectively, establishing partnerships with Southern NGOs. This Working Paper focuses on capacity-building elements of the programme, providing background and commentary on current principles and practice in capacity building for Southern organisations involved in using research based evidence in policy processes.

Some of the issues covered include:

• definitions of capacity-buiilding
• planning, monitoring and evaluation of capacity building efforts
• examples of current approaches, including the African Capacity Building Foundation, the INTRAC praxis programme and the Japan International Cooperation Agency.

Key points introduced are:

• capacity-building efforts need to be considered from a systems perspective, recognising the dynamics and connections among various actors and issues at different levels as part of a broader unit rather than as loosely connected factors
• to be successsful, capacity-building needs to be driven by locally-defined needs and needs to build on existing capacities
• no approach can be imposed on sceptical individuals, organisations or communities
• costs and benefits must be acceptable to those who control the local capacity building process.

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