Capacity development: it is time to think about new ways of generating and sharing knowledge

4 July 2012

I am not an expert on capacity development per se but I’ve been a practitioner from CIPPEC of a combination of activities during the last years in Latin America which have helped me reflect and learn on what seems more promising in terms of helping others improve the way they try to influence policy through research.+ Much of this work has been performed under EBPDN LA with ODI and most of it under the program “Spaces for engagement” with GDNet, a strategic partner for us in this field.

This is why Enrique’s and Martine’s review findings from a recent communications project that RAPID and INASP worked on for IDRC have highly raised my attention. Just in time, I thought. After a couple of years of trying out several ways of improving what we know about policy influence (combining formal training workshops with online courses, technical assistance to think tanks, design of an innovative M&E methodology focused on policy influence, etc.) we have decided at CIPPEC to develop a capacity building strategy for 2013-2018 that allows us to be more strategic in the way we use our limited resources to assist policy research organisations and its leaders to enhance policy impact.

Firstly, I believe that some responses to questions posed by Enrique in his previous post and some of his recommendations may vary according to each type of individual/organisation taking part of the initiative (they tend to be very heterogeneous, which on the one hand enriches the exercise but on the other hand makes it extremely hard to please all participants). At CIPPEC we had experiences in training networks on these issues and even though they might share beliefs, values, research projects, etc, each network member had very different capacities and interests in research communications revealed in a pre-diagnosis. So how do we deal with this when resources are scarce? Ideally we would have all the time and resources to work both in groups and individually to support real change processes with viable plans and enable cross-learning but this is not the case in most of the cases. Therefore we face the challenge to make the most of what is available; smart decisions that use the evidence shared by Enrique and our own experience are crucial then.

Another key and related decision is whether those offering the support aim at training individuals and/or organisations. Strategies to do so will differ significantly and it is extremely difficult to make these decisions at the very beginning of a capacity building project and when there is a diverse group that will take part of it.

Finally, another tricky but very profound question is: How do we monitor and evaluate these efforts? How do we know if and how we have contributed to developing this sort of capacities? I agree that stand-alone workshops are not then most desirable strategy but I’ve heard/seen persons and organisations making a big change after attending one where excellent trainers have been able to raise their awareness on these issues and spearheaded the right questions at the individual/organisational levels. Thus, what are we aiming at and how we will know if we’ve done good?

An excellent paper that has significantly influenced how I think about all these issues and how we plan to further develop our capacity to build capacity at CIPPEC is “Learning purposefully in capacity development. Why, what and when to measure?” by Peter Taylor and Alfredo Ortiz. We need to develop new thinking about these issues and this paper triggers this type of thinking for all of us: donors, “trainers”, “trainees”. As we titled one of our handbooks, I believe we are all a little bit of learners, teachers and practitioners. That’s why ways to generate and share knowledge are increasingly horizontal! For us, online courses have enlarged the opportunity to make this happen as the knowledge is shared and discusses between peers and colleagues. What participants of our courses ask, the reflections they make, the real live examples they share, have all largely enhanced the knowledge we share in the next edition of the same course.

Finally, I am more and more convinced of the value of constant cross-fertilisation between theory and practice (and that’s what we’ve tried to do in our work all these years) which will significantly affect what we consider valuable knowledge and how we share it. Sir Ken Robinson  has very effectively conveyed the importance of rethinking education: there is a real and increasing call for creativity in the way we treat knowledge. For this, group learning is key, collaboration is the strategy for defining crucial questions and co-building the answers. Spaces -like this blog- where we can share what we know and don’t know about the topics that we are passionate about are a promising sign of how capacity of all-teachers, learners and practitioners (which are changing roles for all individuals) can be further developed.