Employing critical pedagogy and transformative theory as a theoretical framework, I examined a learning process associated with building capacity in community-based organizations (CBOs) through an investigation of the Institutional Capacity Building Program (ICBP) initiated by a Foundation. The study sought to: (a) examine the importance of institutional capacity building for individual and community development; (b) investigate elements of a process associated with a program and characteristics of a learning process for building capacity in CBOs; and (c) analyze the Foundation’s approach to synthesizing, systematizing, and sharing learning. The study used a narrative research design that included 3 one-on-one, hour-long interviews with 2 women having unique vantage points in ICBP: one is a program facilitator working at the Foundation and the other runs a CBO supported by the Foundation. The interviews’ semistructured questions allowed interviewees to share stories regarding their experience with the learning process of ICB and enabled themes to emerge from their day-to-day experience. Through the analysis of this learning process for institutional capacity building, a few lessons can be drawn from the experience of the Foundation.

This paper is a contribution to our understanding of building local capacity in economics education and research in developing and transition countries. The contributors and discussants in this publication provide many insights on these issues. In particular, they offer a deep reflection on the need for capacity building in economics education and research in each region. For the last 15 years, The World Bank, its partners, and government have supported the "centers of excellence" for building capacity in modern economics education and research in developing and transition countries. To strengthen these efforts, the Central European University (CEU) and the World Bank jointly organized a conference entitled "Scaling Up Capacity Building in Economics Education and Research: Lessons Learned and Future Directions," which took place at the CEU campus in Budapest, Hungary, on June 14-15, 2005. The material from this conference is covered in this publication.

Achieving rapid development calls for improved capacity in the public and private sectors to support development policies and projects. The World Bank recognizes that capacity building is a long-term process requiring a systemic approach. That is why many Bank projects in Africa and elsewhere include capacity development activities. But three drawbacks have limited the effectiveness of these efforts: many operations do not -- but need to -- take an integrated view of solutions involving the individual, organizational, and institutional contexts; individual, organizational, and institutional links vary greatly across sectors -- not addressing these differences has led to less effective capacity building; and capacity goals as they relate to this understanding of the individual, organizational, and institutional aspects have not been explicit. This Capacity Brief discusses and illustrates the importance of integrating capacity-building efforts at all three levels, and addressing differences among sectors in their integration...

The objective of the Financial/Private Sector Capacity Building project (1995-2000) was to assist the Government of Mauritania in implementing a program of private sector promotion through strengthening the legal and regulatory framework and creating an enabling environment for private investment. The project was put in place at a time when major macro-economic imbalances had already been addressed and it extended and deepened reforms initiated under the adjustment program in the mid-1980s. It focused on activities which (i) encourage investor interest in the private sector, particularly in mining and fishing by, for example, revising commercial and tax codes ; and (ii) strengthen the financial sector for providing better credit and banking services needed for the development of private sector activities. Lessons learned focused on genuine stakeholder participation to achieve intended objectives. Mauritania has modernized its business law without any conflict with Islamic law thanks to the involvement of traditional magistrates in the law preparation process. It would have been helpful to have limited the number of executing agencies involved in delivering the several complex components. Institutional change...

The note looks at the interrelation of three essential components to economic development: capacity building - the development of skills and institutions; good governance; and, economic reform, the two other components which cannot be implemented without well-functioning institutions. It further reviews the rationale and evidence of institutional capacity building, because it provides the framework within which people, and firms participate in the economy. Most importantly, the different specific objectives of international financial institutions are examined, first in their support to investments, e.g., infrastructure and capacity building within an adjustment program; second, in the achievement of economic and social policy; and, third, in encouraging economic development, and business practices, through training, and collaborative efforts. The note specifically reviews the support provided by the International Monetary Fund, which includes capacity building towards enhancing economic expertise, through technical assistance...

The Indigenous Peoples Leadership Capacity Building Program for the Andean Countries (Andean Program) is the result of an initiative of the Fund for the Development of Indigenous Peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean (Fondo Indígena), supported initially by the governments of Ecuador and Peru and later by the main national indigenous organizations of the Andean countries of Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela. Responding to this interest, the World Bank started a participatory process to identify the demand and the most important themes which would be the basis for a capacity-building program. As a consequence, training modules on governance, development with identity, indigenous rights, and the use of technologies of information and communications (ICT) have been prepared and validated in a series of workshops held since 2003, with the participation of indigenous leaders.

In advisory services, the author often tries to develop markets for capacity building services where currently there is no visible demand or supply. For the Corporate Governance (CG) Program in Southern Europe, the author developed a market-based approach to enable our partners to explore new business opportunities in the field of specialized education, training, and conferences that they previously had avoided because of lack of experience and/or high financial risks.

This note discusses the interface between community-driven development (CDD) and decentralization. In particular, it focuses on the aspects of decentralization programs related to local government capacity building, where the practical application of CDD principles becomes meaningful. The note considers how the principles of CDD are being incorporated into local government capacity building projects, and examines where potential limitations may exist. It does not intend to be a comprehensive review of either CDD or decentralization but rather to use a few examples, especially in projects under preparation or implementation in Africa, as illustrative of this emerging approach.

This is the final consolidated report of an extensive program to assess the financial performance and capacity building needs of the UPK Revolving Loan Funds under the PNPM Mandiri project. As explained in the report, the assessment program covered 508 rural and urban UPKs in the provinces of Central Java, Yogyakarta, Nusa Tenggara Timor and West Sumatra. The aim was to cover 30 percent of rural UPK RLFs in these four provinces and 10 percent of the urban UPKs in order to establish the achievements and determine areas of improvement to enable these UPKs to provide a better service to the low income families in their operational areas. This report covers all 267 rural UPK RLFs and 241 urban UPKs identified for the purpose in the four provinces.

This note examines key stages of national monitoring and evaluation systems’ (NMESs) development in different country contexts and argues for tailored approaches to building M and E capacities. The development of NMESs rests on four building blocks - vision of leadership, an enabling environment, capacity to supply and analyze M and E information, and capacity to demand and use M and E information. Developing countries can differ significantly in their performance along these four dimensions - some have virtually no NMES, while others are at a much more advanced stage where reliable and timely M and E information is generated and used. Most developing countries likely fall in between. Using the example of five African countries, this note discusses the differences and similarities in capacity-building needs for countries at different levels of NMES development.

Background Knowledge mobilisation in healthcare organisations is often carried out through relatively short-term projects dependent on limited funding, which raises concerns about the long-term sustainability of implementation and improvement. It is becoming increasingly recognised that the translation of research evidence into practice has to be supported by developing the internal capacity of healthcare organisations to engage with and apply research. This process can be supported by external knowledge mobilisation initiatives represented, for instance, by professional associations, collaborative research partnerships and implementation networks. This conceptual paper uses empirical and theoretical literature on organisational learning and dynamic capabilities to enhance our understanding of intentional capacity building for knowledge mobilisation in healthcare organisations. Discussion The discussion is structured around the following three themes: (1) defining and classifying capacity building for knowledge mobilisation; (2) mechanisms of capability development in organisational context; and (3) individual, group and organisational levels of capability development. Capacity building is presented as a practice-based process of developing multiple skills...

There is widespread consensus that Australia's capacity building program has been broadly successful. It is credited with encouraging the adoption of 'best practice' economic reform in the region, which will encourage economic growth and development in the region. It has also assisted in furthering APEC's goal of regional economic integration. However, a series of improvements can be made which will allow the program to better achieve these objectives. can still be made. Based on interviews with persons involved, academics and independent research, several proposals have been developed which should allow the program to better achieve its outcomes. These are as follows: 1. Better evaluation criteria. Current criteria are either too focussed on the near-term (based on goals more appropriate to technical and infrastructure projects), or focused on intangible long-term outcomes. A greater effort should be made to link the two outcomes. Specific goals should be set, but an effort should be made to link these to broader institutional transformations. Evaluation methods should not be based on technical goals used on "conventional" aid programs. Australia should also consider adopting the recommendations from the upcoming OECD 2011 Aid-for-Trade Global Review...

The authors examine the impact of trade facilitation on bilateral trade flows. They examine trade facilitation and capacity-building priorities in 12 countries in the Europe and Central Asia region-eight of the current members of the European Union: Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia, and three candidate members: Bulgaria, Romania, and Turkey. The results suggest that behind-the-border factors play an important role in determining bilateral trade flows (controlling for the effects of tariffs, development levels, distance, and regional characteristics of exporters and importers, among other factors). The development of new data sets to expand work related to trade facilitation, including strengthening the empirical work explored here, is a key priority without which intelligent policy and priorities cannot be made. The authors' analysis is based on data from the World Economic Forum, Global Competitiveness Report 2001-2002, World Competitiveness Yearbook 2000, and Kaufmann, Kraay, and Zoido-Lobaton (2002). The results indicate that more gains in exports than in imports are expected should the values of three out of the four indicators (port efficiency, regulatory regimes, and information technology infrastructure) of the new and candidate member countries improve halfway to the EU15 average. These countries would expect large trade gains as well as improvements in trade balances as their integration into the EU continues. For example...

The cases from the forum presented here capture the lessons from the science, technology, and innovation (STI) capacity building experiences of both developing and industrial countries (governments working in partnership with the private sector, nongovernmental organizations, academia, and development partners). These cases highlight ways that STI capacity building programs have enabled countries to achieve the following: (i) provide essential services, such as access to clean drinking water in rural villages and availability of affordable, reliable energy sources; (ii) exploit opportunities to produce higher-productivity, value-added agriculture crops; (iii) transition from exporting unprocessed raw materials to exporting value-added products and from low-skilled assembly operations to higher-skilled manufacturing processes; (iv) create benefits from an increasingly open trading system and increased flows of foreign direct investment (FDI) by proactively generating spillovers to the local economy; and (v) maintain competitiveness in a rapidly changing global economy marked by rapid technological change. History suggests that these challenges are daunting...

A World Bank team worked closely with the Ministry of Education (MoE) on the Oman education sector study which was launched in October 2012. The Minister of Education expressed, at different occasions, her appreciation for both the product of this collaboration and its process. This report provides a comprehensive review of the Oman pre-tertiary education and offers policy recommendations in light of international experiences. There are certain key steps in ensuring that the World Bank delivers a quality product and transfers knowledge to partners, including: clear roles and responsibilities for the bank and government teams; close collaboration between the teams; a focus on capacity building; a skillful, dedicated, and cohesive team; and focus on results.

Cape Verde was the first single party state to hold pluralistic elections in the African subcontinent in 1991. This process provided extraordinary momentum for reforms. The principal objective of the Public Sector Reform and Capacity building project was to support the government's broader program to transform and modernize key public institutions, the laws supporting them, and the personnel staffing them, thereby helping sustain the overall economic and social reform program which the government had initiated. This Note summarizes its impact on the ground and the lessons learned.

The coastal zone of Eastern Africa includes the coastal lowlands from Sudan to South Africa, the nearshore islands off the coasts of Tanzania and Mozambique, and the oceanic islands of Madagascar, the Seychelles, Comoros, Mauritius, and Reunion. In some of the countries of the sub-region, at least 80 percent of the population can be considered coastal. Overexploitation of coastal and marine resources and the degradation of the resource base could significantly limit the sub-region's potential for sustainable economic growth and development. In 1997, the Secretariat for Eastern African Coastal Area Management was launched in Maputo, Mozambique, to assist countries in the East African Region to coordinate and implement Integrated Coastal Management (ICM) activities. Capacity building and the need for enhanced information sharing were seen as critical issues. Critical skills that needed to be built up included techniques for problem solving, strategic planning, project/program monitoring and evaluation, and conflict resolution. In mid-1998...

This evaluation assesses the relevance and effectiveness of Bank support for public sector capacity building in Africa, over the past 10 years. It draws on studies of Benin, Ethiopia, Ghana, Malawi, Mali, and Mozambique; aggregate assessments of country strategies and operations across the Bank's Africa Region; and, reviews of three corporate and Regional programs dedicated to capacity building-the World Bank Institute, the Institutional Development Fund, and the Bank-supported African Capacity Building Foundation. Main findings suggest recent changes in approach have made Bank support more relevant; most capacity support remains fragmented; sector-specific capacity building approaches need strengthening; tools and instruments could be more effectively and fully utilized; and, quality assurance is inadequate. These findings underscore the importance of approaching capacity building in Africa as a core objective, and ensuring that Bank capacity building support is country-owned, results oriented, and evidence-based. The evaluation recommends that: the Bank strengthen its knowledge base...

This article examines capacity building measures used by the risk and emergency management (REM) sector in Australia relevant to natural resource management (NRM), and in particular to the regional delivery of two national NRM programs - the Natural Herit

It has been shown that training biomedical equipment technicians (BMETs) improves healthcare, but it is unclear if capacity building for repair and maintenance of medical equipment leads to improved patient health outcomes, and whether that relationship between equipment service and health can be measured.

Health indicators are identified that may be used to measure an impact on patient health outcomes of Engineering World Health's biomedical equipment repair and maintenance training program in Rwanda.

Fieldwork was conducted for 9 weeks in country to identify these indicators. Providers and administrators in twelve hospitals in Rwanda were interviewed about patient health outcomes, equipment use, and procedure preference based on equipment availability for selected clinical focus areas. Equipment availability and status were also surveyed. From the existing literature, expected health outcomes were compared between procedure preferences to estimate how patients would be affected by the availability of functional medical equipment.

Neonatal jaundice treatment with phototherapy lamps, neonatal thermoregulation with incubators, and oxygen provision for acute respiratory management were identified as areas where the relationship between equipment service training and health could be measured. It is recommended that some of these areas be studied in the field to confirm and quantify the connection.

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