Capacity Building

1
Capacity Building

• A guided discussion
• brought to you by

Promoting Community Sustainability Linking
Research and Action
2
Overall Aim

• The first two sessions were, in a sense, a
  capacity building exercise both for TEA and for
  the other organizations who participated
• Through the examination of a case study and the
  lessons learned from the literature, we hope to
  better understand how we can build capacity for
  our members and for ourselves

3
What is Capacity Building?

• Providing skills to empower community groups and
  their members to better control their
  effectiveness
• Increasing chances to participate in democracy
• Improving resources available to community
  groups and
• Strengthening civic engagement.

4
The Capacity Framework(from Effective Capacity
Building in Non-profit Organizations, Venture
Philanthropy Partners)

• Aspirations
• Strategy
• Organizational Skills
• Human Resources
• Systems Infrastructure
• Organizational Structure
• Culture

5
Ways we can increase capacity

• Projects and research should come from the
  bottom-up
• Community groups/ members volunteers must be
  viewed as partners not adversaries
• Activities should seek to include/ accommodate
  everyone and not replicate the power structures
  that often oppress community organizations
• Every effort should be made to include members/
  those most affected in the work, thus enabling
  them to carry out the work after the assistance
  is no longer present.

6
Ladder of Empowerment(Elizabeth Rocha)

• RUNG 1 Atomistic Individual Empowerment
• RUNG 2 Embedded Individual Empowerment
• RUNG 3 Mediated Empowerment
• RUNG 4 Socio-Political Empowerment
• RUNG 5 Political Empowerment

7
The CURA - ESLARP

• East St. Louis Action Research Project
• a series of community-based planning projects
  involving University of Illinois at
  Urbana-Champaign and East St. Louis community
  organizations
• residents established research priorities
• community members encouraged to participate
  completely in planning process
• university members got involved in direct actions
  together with community members

8
Challenges - ESLARP

• Institutional barriers such as academic
  schedules, aversion to risk, recognition norms
  and publishing conventions all work to discourage
  academics from getting involved in
  community-based research
• Disparity of access, experience, level of
  responsibility between academics community
  workers need to be understood and rectified as
  much as possible
• All players, including appropriate levels of
  govt need to be considered - lack of political
  will on any level can destroy a project

9
Insights - ESLARP

• Establish a balanced approach to project training
  that includes community members as well as
  academics
• Encourage critical reflection by resisting the
  temptation to act quickly
• Use student resources to build capacity locally
• Use evaluation as an empowerment tool
• Create an interdisciplinary approach

10
Your Ideas

• What do we currently do to build our capacity
  within our organization?
• What do we do to increase the capacity of our
  members volunteers?

11
Degrees of Participation

• Persuasion
• Education
• Information Sharing Feedback
• Consultation
• Joint Planning Shared Decision-making
• Delegated Authority
• Self-determination

12
Participatory Practices

• Hosting a search conference

13
Two Activities

• Unpacking to Fly
• High Status/ Low Status

14
Feedback

• Feedback is welcome
• speak with me directly after the session
• telephone me later 416-596-7989
• email me colette_boileau_at_hotmail.com
• email Sustainable Toronto barbara_schaefer_at_utoron
  to.ca
• email TEA keith_at_torontoenvironment.org
• send comments to 30 Duncan St., Suite 201,
  Toronto, ON

15

• Thanks for joining us for this guided discussion.