InterAction Highlights Best Practices in Capacity Building

William Sparks presented on the ACDI/VOCA winning project Sell More For More and began by underscoring the importance of remembering that “it is not about the work we do, but it is about the work we can help people do.” He explained how ACDI/VOCA organizes sessions where local institutions share management and technical training with farming groups. Innovative training materials are, among other things, used to help farmer organizations create market-oriented business plans through the program, which has been replicated in Rwanda, Tanzania and Ethiopia. Sparks was eager to share the innovative uses of technology, such as the implementation of “clicker groups” which use interactive devices to quickly track and tally responses to questions in a group setting.

 

Evariste Karangwa spoke about an innovative project from Lutheran World Relief which partnered with a 5,000-strong small-holder coffee famer cooperative in Uganda – the Gumutindo Coffee Cooperative Enterprise – and utilized a two-pronged approach, focusing on building both individual farmers’ capacity and the organizational capacity of the cooperative. Karangwa’s presentation illustrated the impact of the project through simple infographics which underlined the impressive results of increased coffee production, exports and higher incomes for farmers. Farmers, for example, increased their ability to produce high quality and higher yields of coffee, resulting in a 60 percent increase in coffee production over three years.

 

The Alliance to End Hunger shared the innovations of the National Alliance Partnership Program (NAPP), which presenter Steve Myers explained adopts the ideology that “we are always stronger working together than we could possibly be working alone.” The program worked to help create National Alliances in Ghana, Kenya and Uganda and to help them build their own organizational and financial capacity. Myers shared personal anecdotes to help illustrate the role that project implementers may play in capacity building, recalling a time when he was working with a group of NAPP organizers in Kenya. His carefully planned itinerary for the day was overhauled when the group decided to run things differently, and Myers realized that he could better serve the group as a facilitator rather than a leader.  

 

While these Best Practice and Innovations Award winning projects bring forth effective approaches to capacity building, they are not without their own challenges. Presenters emphasized problems with accessing resources, and coming to the realization that there is not always a “one size fits all” method. However these projects feature important capacity-building approaches that many NGOs can adopt in their own programming – whether it be training products from ACDI/VOCA, the  transfer and scalability approach from Lutheran World Relief or the role of leadership with Alliance to End Hunger.