Capacity Development and Institutional Strengthening
Agriteam is strongly committed to a capacity development (CD) approach in our work with developing and transitional countries. Simply put, this means we design and implement our projects in a way that empowers our partners and the populations they serve to:
- set their own development goals
- improve their ability to meet these goals (e.g., through better services or personnel performance)
- continue to apply best practices and knowledge gained through the project long after it ends, and thus take charge of their own development path
Our CD process begins in the design or inception phase. Using appreciative inquiry, we encourage our partners to voice their present situation and challenges and describe a better future situation and set of circumstances. We then work with them to find a solution to meet their hopes and expectations for themselves, their organizations and the national institutions they support. This solution will be embedded in their social and political culture as well the enabling environment.
The vast majority of our projects use a tried and tested four-stage capacity development model that helps our client-partners to:
- establish local ownership and consensus about the need for change
- build capacity in priority areas
- apply the improved capacity so it supports improved performance
- support the broader institutionalization of changes for sustainability
Follow-up support is integrated into all our CD interventions to ensure that new knowledge and skills have the chance to flourish and move beyond the individual and even the organizational level. A sustainable CD result is systemic: it can transcend its initial mandate and provide ongoing support for local or national reform agendas.
For example, in our Tibet Basic Human Needs Project, CD results with local village partners formed the basis for village-based poverty alleviation models for regional replication. Our STEPS II project in Egypt supported a leadership model in three districts and was then adopted into a national school leadership program with the Ministry of Education in Egypt. And CIDA selected our LGSP II project in the Philippines as a “model” capacity development project for developing local governance capacity and providing a framework for national replication.