Imagine this: you are working in your office and the boss comes in with a stranger, someone who is obviously not from your country or culture and says “This is Some Unusual Name and he/she is going to teach you how to do your job.  Make sure you do as you’re told.”  How would you feel?

Sound familiar?   I’ll bet it does – because if you’re in international development, chances are that has happened - except that you were the stranger from another country with the unusual…

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I always walk away from a conversation with Saeed Wame, founder and director of Namwera AIDS Coordinating Committee (NACC) of Malawi, with a new understanding. Whether he be blowing my concept of “capacity” wide open, or offering a completely new definition of volunteer, Saeed is the sort of community leader whose wisdom and humility always leaves you with much to be mulled over and much to be integrated into your work and life.

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The title slogan is not mine, but I remember reading in some of the partnership literature that ‘collaboration is not a marriage’. You don’t have to love each other. The whole point of collaboration is that each party has something unique to achieve and needs the other to do it. Of course it does help if the parties like each other. In case collaboration is expected to achieve better results, how can we realize more likability among organizations, especially when they have potentially…

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The push for a stronger focus on equity in human development is gathering momentum at the international level. Its premise is increasingly supported by United Nations reports and strategies as well as by independent analysis. More and more national policies and international alliances are focusing on achieving equitable development results. While this is the right way to go, it poses important challenges – and opportunities – to the evaluation function. How can one strengthen the capacity of… Continue

Building on how-matters.org’s earlier posts, “How to build strong relationships with grassroots organizations” (part 1, part 2, part…

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'It's not the biggest, the brightest, or the best that will survive, but those who adapt the quickest'. Charles Darwin

In June I joined a guided reading of the Barefoot Guide 2: learning practices in organizations and social change. (Download this and other Barefoot resources from here). When I saw the announcement of this initiative I immediately jumped at it. Since last April I am freelancing again,…

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It was fun to watch the reactions of the participants. They discovered that most capacity development initiatives in project management deal with the planning process and the resulting plan. It is as if the project goals have already been achieved as soon as the plan is submitted.

 

An informal survey of the time devoted to the planning process among a group of…

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I was reading Ian Thorpe's latest blogpost on Open data - experience needed. Insightful as usual, weighing the pro's and cons of the fact that more and more development data are being made available publicly.

Indeed, ever more data are available, but…

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Stronger, more sustainable community-based organizations can contribute to a more effective and participatory civil society response to the needs of vulnerable people in the developing world.

Donors can support organizations even at the beginning stages of organizational development with an intent to leave groups stronger than when they first entered into partnership. Different types of capacity building activities such as exchange visits and mentoring relationships between…

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