Capacity Building

In this interview, Sharon Morris, Director of the Youth & Conflict Division at Mercy Corps, reflects on recent progress and achievements made in the advancement of peacebuilding design, monitoring and evaluation. She praises the maturation thus far of peacebuilding DM&E, and implores practitioners to have more faith and confidence that our approaches will be validated by the evidence collected through evaluation....

As part of the multi-country Governance and Transparency Fund (GTF) program funded by UKAID, Search for Common Ground (SFCG) in Burundi implemented a three month project from June until September 2011 in support of its overall programmatic goal: to promote inclusive, effective and responsible participation in a process of social transformation toward a fair and equal society in Burundi. The goal was supported by the following key objective: Promote constructive exchange and dialogue between and among Burundian youth from different political parties and political leaders about governance issues, particularly political manipulation of youth and its resulting violence, with a view to encouraging peaceful cohabitation. ...

Some developing countries and countries in transition experience security and stability problems usually due to the weakness of the state, the disorganization of security forces and the lack of transparency in doing business. In most of developing countries, the army must usually be reconfigured and military and civilian planners well trained and equipped....

The general aims and specific objectives of participatory mapping initiatives vary significantly. This variation is directly related to the end-use to which these maps will be put, which in turn is influenced by the audience that will view and make decisions about the content of these maps....

The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) is an international financial institution and a specialized United Nations agency dedicated to eradicating poverty and hunger in the rural areas of developing countries. Working with poor rural people, governments, donors, NGOs and many other partners, IFAD focuses on country-specific solutions to empower poor rural women and men to achieve higher incomes and improved food security....

This guide introduces some of the best recent literature on the role of communication in governance. It highlights the major critical debates surrounding the relationship between communication, government accountability and responsiveness, and state-society relations in developing countries....

Media development seeks to support and promote a pluralistic, editorially independent and financially sustainable media sector. An independent media sector buttresses key governance goals such as voice, accountability, and transparency -- not through dissemination of messages about these issues, but through its very existence....

  How can the effectiveness of peacebuilding operations in countries marked by conflict be better measured? This policy brief examines the steps needed to improve the measurement of peacebuilding work, highlights the technical and political problems this work faces, and makes recommendations for action by organisations in the field.   ...

The international development community has been doing evaluation capacity development (ECD) for years with limited success. ECDG believes that the limited success is due to the manner in which evaluation capacity development has been conceptualized. ...

This book is intended to assist both external and internal efforts to strengthen organizations and to provide a framework for documenting the effects of such efforts. ...

This case study looks at the Ubon Institute for Skill Development (UBISD), with which Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) implemented a technical cooperation project for five years beginning in 1988. UBISD is a Thai government facility in northeastern Thailand for training young people in various vocational skills....

Three themes dominate this report: Capacity development needs special attention and focus. It needs practitioners who will think constantly about how best to leave a sustainable institutional legacy. But it loses relevance as an idea when discussed in the abstract....

Innovation Network's own workbook (revised in 2010), offering an introduction to the processes and concepts of the logic model. ...

This paper explores the evidence base for what makes an effective coalition with the assumption that understanding what makes them effective and how to assess and improve them will increase their effectiveness as an advocacy tool and reduce potential frustrations associated with operating in coalition. ...

The Capacity Assessment Methodology User’s Guide provides UNDP and other development practitioners with an overview of UNDP’s approach to Capacity Development and Capacity Assessment and a step-by-step guide to conducting a capacity assessment using UNDP’s “default” Capacity Assessment Framework and Supporting Tool. ...

The Research and Policy in Development (RAPID) programme has for almost a decade undertaken research on the role of knowledge in policy processes, which it has endeavoured to translate into practical advice. This paper reflects on some of this work managing capacity development processes and draw implications for future practice. ...

This paper is from the Reflection Series emerging from the ECDPM Study on Capacity, Performance and Change. The paper responds to one of the general study’s main findings, which is that current monitoring and evaluating (M&E) practices do not fully recognise the combination of ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ characteristics that make up effective capacity....

Participatory Monitoring and Evaluation (PME) offers development organizations a host of opportunities for improving the performance of poverty alleviation programs and building the management capacity of local partners. While many agencies can evaluate poverty programs using outside “expert” approaches, few have the know-how and skills to employ PME approaches and fewer still are able to design and implement effective PME systems....

Search for Common Ground has been working in Nepal since February 2006 with the mission to transform the way the world deals with conflict: away from adversarial approaches, toward cooperative solutions. With a multi-pronged program to support the peace process, SFCG combines media with community peacebuilding work that translates into the production of two nationally and 17 locally broadcast radio programs and community-based activities with youth, children and other key actors in the peace process. ...

Thesis critically examining the role of INGOs, such as CARE International, in strengthing governance in post conflict states. ...