Tuesday, February 3, 2015
TCC Group Exlpores a New Approach to Capacity Building
The way a funder defines a problem, a field, an issue or a set of stakeholders can have a powerful effect on the impact it can achieve. And while situations vary, there are better and worse ways of seeing.
Consider the term "capacity building." In the social sector, it has been lifted up as a panacea and mocked as a placebo. But the discussion often fails to make a fundamental distinction between capacity (skills, knowledge and relationships) and capacity building (the process of cultivating those skills, knowledge and relationships). As a result, people focus on the processes and logistics of capacity building (the how) without identifying clearly what capacities need to be built and who needs to build them....