Capacity building

Capacity building is a type of institution-building that strengthens an organization’s ability to fulfill its mission. It aims to promote good management, persistence, and strong leadership to achieve results. This is often done through an entity independent from the organization being supported. Capacity building can involve various types of organizations or institutions, and it may be short or long term.

Stages of capacity building:

• Exploration: The Capacity building stage is the process of identifying and prioritizing needs, clarifying expectations, and initiating change to bring about the desired outcomes. This can involve setting up learning plans for the staff or supervising learning for individuals not directly employed by a government institution but working in partnership with an organization. A new team may have to be recruited and trained in services offered by the institution and technical skills specific to their on-the-job work, such as software or hardware components used.
• Emerging Implementation: Capacity building can be shown in three steps:
  • employees participate in activities led by an international agency and are taught new skills, new technology or introduced to systems the agency has validated; (2) the employees build new knowledge or technological infrastructure, for example, to manage and utilize collected data; and (3) the employees apply their new knowledge to changes in their existing capacity to produce increased outputs – more people immunized, more hectares of land developed, etc.
• Full Implementation: Interventions become integrated into practice and are refined as desired changes are evaluated. At this stage, capacity-building providers may need to modify their approach to training programs, or capacity-building activities may need to be changed to effect desired changes entirely. At the end of a training program, participants may evaluate how well they have integrated the course material.
• Sustainability: The final stage of the innovation process is the “organization’s pervasive and consistent use” of refined skills and practices, along with the capacity to analyze and modify rules for continuous improvement.