Institutional Change and Capacity Development
Any development intervention planned at institutional level is, to our mind, essentially about institutional change: it is about preparing participating actors and organisations to play new or changing roles within a specific institutional setting and to assist them in implementation and follow up. Institutional change may involve a national public reform initiative requiring actors and organisations to adjust their areas or focus of work in order to effectively reposition themselves and remain relevant within their setting.
For example, a new sector reform initiative within education may require that educational institutions must generate own funds through consultancies or that they engage with labour market institutions to calibrate their curricula to the demand of the labour market. Similarly, new national or international policies or development priorities may require government entities, civil society and donors to establish new partnerships and collaborative arrangements in order to play their new roles effectively. In brief, institutional change presents numerous challenges not always fully appreciated from the onset.
 |
In our trainings we mix content related learning with participatory interaction to ensure a good balance between theory, practice and individual dynamics and to make training fun and engaging. |
Our unit supports organisations individually and as collective groups of actors to help them prepare to develop new capacities to enable their staff and their organisations to understand and respond effectively to institutional changes. This involves finding answers to questions such as: how to develop trust between new partners, how to create an institutional mapping of specific implications for individual organisations and their stakeholders, including required changes to existing mandates, and how to design a long term institutional change process that is clear and supported by all affected stakeholders. We also provide short and long term programme support to help plan, implement, and assess the effectiveness of institutional change processes as well as training trajectories for individuals and entire organisations.
Examples of assignments
- Enhancing the capacity of the Institute of Rural Development Planning for strengthening the public service and local government in light of decentralisation processes in Tanzania;
- Regional restructuring and transition process of seven WWF offices in Southern Africa and organisational strengthening of regional and country offices to respond effectively to changing national and international policy changes;
- Capacity development support for effective implementation of competency based learning and institutional strengthening in Tanzania;
- Coaching of Dutch Embassy staff to help them perform new roles in supporting institutional change for local institutions, public, NGOs and private;
- Evaluation of UNESCO's interventions to gain insight in strategic aspects of working in post-conflict and disaster situations in three countries;
- Addressing environmental impunity in Guatemala by capacity development support of staff with specialization in environmental law and enforcement;
- Demobilization of combatants from internal conflict through institutional strengthening of High Council as facilitating reintegration institution in Colombia;
- Tailor-made training courses and case work on Institutional Assessment for Capacity Development for EC staff at headquarters and at country delegations;
- Long term Capacity Development support to Ministry of Integrated Water Resources Management under a public multi sector reform initiative, including support needs of individual departments in Egypt.
See our MDF Experiences to read more on these assignments
