Capacity Building

Very often we hear about capacity building in an organisation, institutes, factories and many other work places. Now a days we see every organisation gives priority to capacity building. What is capacity building, and why is it necessary and for whom this is necessary. We also talk about accountability – accountability to whom and the immediate thing that comes to our mind is the stake holders. Who are the stakeholders? When we talk about stake holders in an NGO we see a number of stakeholders. The most important stakeholder is the beneficiary for whom we are working for whom the donor agencies provide support, the community, the local authorities, statutory bodies and so on.

So when we talk about Accountability we need to see how an organisation could be accountable. What are the best practices. For this what an organisation would need.. a strong system of internal organizational governance. This will give an assurance to these stakeholders that the organisation does has good systems to ensure that the prorammes are implemented properly. For this an organisation needs to have clear focus, without which the organisation will not be able to meet the requirements on the expected lines of the stakeholders.

One of the most important aspects of building trust of the stakeholders is to establish systems to guarantee that financial resources are properly managed and efficiently used. Though it may look easy to manage an ngo, it is not so as unless and until the ngo is transparent and gain faith of its stakeholders it is difficult to get further funding to run the organisation. For this the organisation apart from systems, needs to have a good team who can be able to manage and who should be highly motivated and who could understand the needs of beneficiaries and community. For this ngos may use various strategies such as capacity building, advocacy,awareness programmes. So, an organisation needs to have a proper planning, good team, transparency, good working systems and above all ensure implementation of these and review these from time to time.

As per wikipedia Community Capacity building, also referred to as capacity development, is a conceptual approach to development that focuses on understanding the obstacles that inhibit people, governments, international organizations and non-governmental organizations from realizing their developmental goals while enhancing the abilities that will allow them to achieve measurable and sustainable results.

The term community capacity building emerged in the lexicon of international development during the 1990s. Today, “community capacity building” is included in the programs of most international organizations that work in development, the World Bank (World Bank), The United Nations (UN) and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) like Oxfam International. Wide usage of the term has resulted in controversy over its true meaning. Community capacity building often refers to strengthening the skills, competencies and abilities of people and communities in developing societies so they can overcome the causes of their exclusion and suffering.

Organizational capacity building is used by NGOs to guide their internal development and activities.

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