ONTRAC 36. Capacity Building Discussions and Reflections

Capacity building is not just the flavour of the month — it has become the flavour of the decade. Donors and international NGOs continue to invest heavily in capacity building of civil society. Many are looking for civil society to deliver predetermined and measurable results. Resources are spent on research and conferences dedicated to discussing the technical challenges we face in this work. But have we lost the vision of the ‘transformational’ — the challenge to the status quo that will lead to fundamental changes at all levels in our societies and in ourselves? Has our moral outrage at the injustices and inequities in the world been blunted by the search for a ‘robust’ practice? These are critical questions facing all of us who are engaged in this work. Finding a meeting point between our values and our practice may be the crucial issue that we need to address at this moment.

This edition of Ontrac explores the discussions and reflections from INTRAC’s Anniversary Conference on civil society capacity building, which brought together 150 participants from over 40 countries.

In this issue Brenda Lipson calls for a realignment from the current practice-focused thinking to a values-based approach, a case study from Sri Lanka illustrates collective ownership and a commitment to context-specific change, Rick James argues for a people-centred focus for implementing change processes, an Oxfam Novib perspective on the issues around capacity building today, and an example from Macedonia demonstrates sustainability through organisational development rather than project funding.