The way forward: Integrated Capacity Development
17 Dec 2010
Integrated capacity development often involves change processes. Changes in people, but also changes in organizations and institutions. NICHE aims to enable organizations and institutions to resolve, innovate and respond to society needs.
NICHE projects are designed to help organizations understand, plan and implement such change processes. Therefore, it is crucial that programme partners adopt a comprehensive and integral approach and treat capacity gaps 'in context' rather than 'in isolation'.
Having said that, there is a need to critically reflect and focus on the way we provide capacity development support. Our experiences with the NICHE programme and its predecessors together with input from stakeholders who participated in the Nuffic Year Congress 2010, enables us to develop a better view on the matter.
In the NICHE programme we need to go beyond capacity development which only focuses on individuals. Organizations do not necessarily grow and change when individuals learn and develop their capacities, especially not when this process is not linked to the organization’s vision and goals.
Integrated capacity development should be in line with the requesting organization's context and its specific capacity needs and implementation capability. Finally, it must also be linked to the broader capacity needs at the sectoral and national level.
Taking an holistic approach
We pursue an holistic approach to capacity development which addresses a basic set of characteristics of an organization.
- current and desired state;
- critical gaps and priorities;
- key-priorities for addressing those gaps.
Stakeholder involvement
In practice, often a combination of interventions will be needed to achieve sustainable results. These might include using evaluation results and outcomes of stakeholders meetings or engaging stakeholders in planning and review activities. We enable this by starting each new project with a so-called inception phase during which both partners can conduct an organizational gap analysis and develop a strategic, long-term vision which extends beyond the project duration.
Context awareness
Southern partners should have full ownership of their capacity developing process. NICHE encourages this through an intensive process of participation, involvement and consultation of national stakeholders. This requires a focus on context-related factors and flexibility, adaptation, creativity and learning. This focus, and the needs of all partners involved should be addressed during the inception phase and beyond. NICHE also aims to create a balance between policy makers and implementers.
Room for innovation
Attention should be paid to a wide range of interventions pursuing new forms of integrated capacity development and new approaches to knowledge and skills delivery on which people can structure their capacity development strategies.
Learning by doing
The implementation of NICHE projects will give an insight into what is happening in the field. So it is a learning process which relies on cooperation and exchange of knowledge and skills between project partners in the various sectors and countries.
Finally, the NICHE approach to ICD is in line with current trends adopted by the many researchers and practitioners of capacity development efforts. Although the understanding of capacity development and consensus on the way forward is growing, practitioners are still facing challenges. So it is important to develop interventions that make a difference.
More information
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