Building the capacity builders: lessons from a multi-country training programme for local consultants

ABSTRACT

Local consultants are an implicit, but overlooked, part of many capacity development strategies. It takes a trustworthy consultant to facilitate genuine change in a civil society organisation. This practical note identifies the learning from a local consultant formation programme (“Consultants for Change” – C4C) implemented in five countries in 2016–17. The note highlights six factors critical to C4C’s apparent success: recruitment; focus of the learning; design of the process; assignments between modules; mentoring support; and the human/financial resources. These same factors may be relevant and applicable to other capacity development programmes.

KEYWORDS:

• Aid – Capacity development
• Civil society – Partnership

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Rick James is an organisational change specialist with more than 25 years’ experience working with over 100 NGOs in Africa, Latin America, Asia and Europe. He is a Principal Consultant at INTRAC, Oxford, UK, and has trained, consulted, researched and written extensively on NGO capacity building and organisational change issues. He has a PhD in NGO management and is an Honorary Visiting Fellow in the Faculty of Management, CASS Business School, London.

Notes

1 INTRAC (International NGO Training and Research Centre) is an international NGO which exists to strengthen the effectiveness of civil society. The Nama foundation is a Malaysian-based foundation supported by the bin Mahfouz family from Saudi Arabia. Nama Foundation generously supported INTRAC to implement this programme.