Building Capacities: Optimizing Synergies

Nancy Alexaki, MSc

Senior Programme Officer Nuffic

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Structure

Introduction and context Assumptions in HR strategies Findings at current capacity building efforts The way forward

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Introduction and Context

The Netherlands Initiative for Capacity development in Higher Education (NICHE) is a Netherlands-funded development cooperation programme aimed at strengthening institutional capacity in developing countries. The programme can support a range of organizations, including post-secondary education institutes, governmental bodies , NGOs, etc.

Focus themes: Water Food security  Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) Security and the rule of Law

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Demand driven approach and local ownership Alignment with national policies and bilateral policies &

programmes Harmonization with other donor programmes Coherence among NICHE projects Attention for gender and labour market needs Modern forms of capacity building Organizational learning approach Steering towards outputs and outcomes Use of regional and local expertise

Context: Principles for capacity development within NICHE

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Underlying assumptions supporting HR capacity:

1. Individuals can make a difference in organizations and countries through technical capacity and leadership skills;

2. The organizational problem is primarily a function of the lack of skills, knowledge, or attitude rather than an organizational or systemic problem;

3. The technical training and skills are relevant to the organizational and country context and can be applied.

Are these assumptions valid?

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Findings on capacity building efforts with focus at HR from the field

“The training frequency are not at the optimum level and difficult to keep pace with the frequent turnover of staff”

“The resource persons are not always fully familiar with the specific organizational issues”

“The trainings are seldom held in the language most trainees would be comfortable in”

“The training methods need to be more participatory and more practical/skills-oriented”

“Exposure visits are practically non-existent when they are perceived as very useful for staff”

“Organizations have difficulties with sending all staff for training since it hampers their routine services”

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Findings on capacity building efforts with focus at organizational level

Often the focus is on low level operational issues (they did this right, they did that wrong) or structures rather than looking at capacity;

There is a substantial—almost exclusive—inward focus on the organization itself, rather than the organization in the context of the larger political, cultural, and institutional system;

The evaluation indicators of organizational capacity development have tended to be

either measures of short-term performance (deliver activities), or reflect organizational infrastructure such as operating manuals, policies, governance structures, or similar elements;

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Findings on capacity building efforts with focus at institutional level

The strategies for systems strengthening and reform are ambitious and seek to address large-scale system behavior change;

A high level application but still linear thinking that a policy change would cause transformation in organizational or systemic behavior;

We do not develop a theory of change that can be implemented;

Once more we work at the individual and organizational levels.

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Where from now?

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Where from now?

Do they align to national priorities? Are synergies among the various level endorsed? And where national organizations and systems are not strong enough, how should be reformed and strengthened, and not bypassed?

But we are very often judged on our ability to “build”. If we build, we declare success and then we leave. Is that enough?

Are we ready to undertake an systemic and systematic approach? Or the need to focus on Results and Resources makes us to focus on sectoral plans and to loose the big picture?

Do we address the gender imbalance with the programmes/projects of today, or do we instead grow the gender gap?

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