Capacity Development

  The Gender and SSR toolkit is an initial response to the need for information and analysis on gender and SSR. It is designed to provide policymakers and practitioners with a practical introduction to why gender issues are important in SSR and what can be done to integrate them. ...

From 2010 to 2012, Search For Common Ground, with support from UNICEF, conducted a project to assist the local Nepalese NGO leadership and staff in shaping capacity building on youth and peacebuilding. As a component of a reintegration and rehabilitation program, the ‘Capacity Building in Youth and Peacebuilding’ project was evaluated using various methods of Focused Group Discussions (FGDs), survey, interviews, and project reports to assess the impact on capacity building and training in Nepal....

When we talk about the current state of DM&E in the peacebuilding field, we often lament the fact that we do not have an established evidence base of what works, and that our methodological approaches are still not that sophisticated compared with other disciplines such as education and health....

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....

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....

The importance of social accountability for development effectiveness has increasingly been acknowledged in recent years. This Trainer’s Guide focuses on the role of communication techniques and approaches for generating genuine citizen demand for accountability. Communication campaigns can motivate and activate citizens to stand up and hold their government accountable....

  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.   ...

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....

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 Evaluation Needs Assessment was created to assess existing capacities and processes for evaluation in an organization. ...

The goal of this handbook is to help NGO staff, and particularly, monitoring and evaluation (M&E) staff to move beyond using network as a metaphor and understand how to measure and map them. More specifically, this handbook is designed to help NGO staff accomplish the following objectives: (a) understand what network analysis is, (b) how to collect network data, (c) how to create visual maps of the network, and (d) how to analyze the network data for program/project development or evaluation. ...

Over the past twenty years, media interventions have become an accepted tool for conflict management. Interventions have often proven ineffective, however, because they lacked clear definition of their intended outcomes.  This research describes an Intended-Outcomes Needs Assessment methodology (IONA) to help address this by: Integrating conflict analysis and media assessments to sharpen the focus on peacebuilding objectives; and Improving the quality and precision of project plans to enable better comparison of the results achieved. ...

Security sector reform (SSR) commonly refers to a nationally-owned process aimed at transforming a dysfunctional security sector into an effective and accountable one that provides security and justice services to all groups of society. The concept of SSR is based on the understanding that ineffective and unaccountable security sectors represent an obstacle to development, in particular in countries emerging from armed conflict....

The 2008 global spike in food prices that caused widespread riots and instability and the recent predictions of another global food crisis highlight the urgency of establishing sustainable food systems, especially in Africa. However, sustainable food systems can only be created if there are coherent and comprehensive approaches to land rights, land policy and land governance....

Project design and proposal writing are core responsibilities for CRS programming staff and take much investment of our human and financial resources. ProPack (Project Package) aims to help CRS staff work in a consistent manner with partners to raise the quality of our planning processes....

This guide presents an approach to developing a monitoring and evaluation (M&E) system for projects supported by Catholic Relief Services (CRS). The content is derived from guidance in ProPack (CRS, 2004 and CRS, 2007) and streamlined based on experience in CRS country programs in Africa, Asia, and Latin America....