Ever since I ended my latest fulltime contract in April I have thrown myself into the virtual world. It's amazing what you can do and learn these days from the comforts of your chair. Behind every space I discover, there is a wealth of other hidden spaces. It is so inspiring.

One of the permanent treasures in my google reader (see below) are the TED Talks: videos of under 18 minutes where passionate doers and thinkers give the…

Following on the interest in my posts on exchange visits between local organizations and oral reporting, here’s another set of guidelines on mentoring relationships for your use and adaptation.

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Stronger, more sustainable community-based organizations can contribute to a more effective and participatory civil society…

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…

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…

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

'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,…

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…

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…

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…

I have lived in different cultures for more than half of my life. It has changed me in many ways; see for instance my blogpost about Facilitator Certification. Not only I have changed, my native country, The Netherlands, has changed too. The Dutch politics are beyond me these days, and I also find people much more stressed. When I stand in line in the supermarket to pay for…

The term “outcome” is probably the most misunderstood term in the International Development field.  Either that or it becomes the most misused term in international development and I would prefer to think it is the former rather than the latter, because the latter would imply an intent that serves no-one at all.

Mind you, the ID field is not alone when it comes to misunderstanding the term outcome.  To put it simply – if you produce something, that is an output.  An outcome occurs as…

This new Climate Planning site brings together over all sorts of tools for climate change planning. Although it is focused on tools for policy makers, it does include sub-national/community/human rights based tools like CARE's Climate Vulnarability and Capacity Assessment Handbook.



I'm blogging about this site for two reasons:

1. It’s a great example of how to make a large variety of knowledge/toolkits easily…

I first posted this at The Broker Online - but felt that it was suitable for this site as well.

As international development practitioners and organisations, we should be more insistent on incorporating more underlying essential skills development that enables effective institutional development, sustainable capacity building, widespread community involvement and improved human wellbeing.

Are our capacity building models adequate for the task of improving human…

The Broker is leading an online discussion on the Bellagio Initiative. In a nutshell this initiative aims to rethink development and phylanthrophy for the 21st century. In this blog, I answer some of the questions:

• Should growth end?
• What to make of increasing conflicts, and how to act?
• Why is the Aid Industry…

In my previous blog, I mentioned that the climate change world is filled with attempts to “integrate”, for instance integrating climate change adaptation into ongoing development programs. Big challenges like climate change adaptation require professionals from vary different scientific backgrounds and value systems to overcome their differences and develop joint action and research initiatives. In this context, I launched a search for experiences with bridging professional…

I have entered the world of climate change adaptation. We all live in this climate changed world, but I now get paid, as a Capacity Development professional (!) to intervene in it.

My orientation around the web revealed a mind boggling number of websites for the Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) practitioner, and I have already come across two studies comparing all the training manuals that have been developed in this field. Much of this fragmentation seems to come from the way…

I have always been able to confidently claim ‘’passion for facilitation”, and have actually chosen it as the title for my blog, but now I can also claim to meet international standards, and can call myself Certified Professional Facilitator (CPF).

 On May 26, I participated in a certification day organised by the International Association of Facilitators (IAF). I have been a member of the IAF for many years, and I…