Christine: Local capacity development

“Equipe Senegal” (Team Senegal) near the USAID/Senegal office on our first day of work.

We have just begun our third week of eight working with USAID/Senegal on a local capacity development project. USAID has a global goal of channeling 30% of its total budget through local governments, NGOs (nongovernmental organizations), and businesses by 2015–currently the figure is 13%. This doesn’t mean that local organizations aren’t actively involved on USAID projects already: the current trend is that major Western NGOs like World Vision, Catholic Relief Services, and other giants are awarded large sums of money from USAID to manage big projects, and these organizations sub-contract portions of these projects to local organizations. USAID/Senegal believes that a key step in achieving the goal of granting more funds directly to local organizations is to increase their capacity so that they can more effectively manage development programs. As I’ve mentioned before, “capacity building” means helping an organization become more able to achieve its goals, such as through improving their human resources systems, their financial procedures, their monitoring & evaluations practices, their organizational structure, and many other things.

Last week we met with four local organizations who list “capacity building” as one of their areas of expertise. We were quite impressed with each of them! Already Senegalese organizations are helping increase the capacity of other Senegalese organizations, which is just what USAID is trying to promote. We met with these organizations to both learn about their capacity building experience, and also to test our “tools”, which are comprised of a survey, an interview, and a document review. This week we will be making final edits to our tools in preparation for three more weeks of interviews. We have been learning so much from our interviews with local organizations and from our meetings with USAID, and the time is just flying by!

Related Posts

Christine: Life in the Tropics

Dakar, the capital of Senegal, is located on the Cap-Vert Peninsula, the most western part of the African continent. Senegal completely surrounds The Gambia. (Map from www.cia.gov) Senegal is just 14 degrees north of the Equator, about the same latitude as Honduras and Nicaragua. This means warm, tropical weather for everyone, and lots of sunscreen for me! Since my arrival at the end of May, the weather has consistently been in the low 80s during the day and the low 70s at night (no rain yet!). We are told that [...]

Read More

Christine: Apartment

Our apartment is on the third floor of this building. Several horses hang out nearby during the day, helping transport supplies for the construction and brick-making in the area. My team moved into our Dakar apartment one week ago, and we have been enjoying getting to know the area. We were fortunate to find, with some help from a local friend, a great furnished four-bedroom apartment which will serve as both our home and office for eight weeks. The showers may be cold and the kitchen small, but we are [...]

Read More
senegal-5_28_12-import-034_med

Christine: Senegalese wedding & Wolof

A few days ago, I had the opportunity to go to a Senegalese wedding celebration. Though I wasn’t at the ceremony itself, it was a great place to absorb a good dose of Senegalese culture. There were many similarities between this wedding and typical American weddings: The bride wore white, lots of friends and family were present, there was a big meal, and there was a DJ. What was different? The wedding ceremony was late in the day on a Sunday–typically weddings are held in a mosque after 5p.m. prayer [...]

Read More
20120524-164700

Christine: Pétanque, Moustiquaire & le Car Rapide

I just arrived in Senegal and things are going great. Thankfully, I am remembering enough of my French to navigate life here so far, and I’m sure it will only improve with practice. My host family is wonderful, and this morning I played “cache-cache” (hide and seek) and “un, deux, trois, soleil” (like red-light green-light) with some of the children. Here is a photo of men playing pétanque (similar to what you may know of as bocce ball) across the street from my host family’s home. They were at it [...]

Read More

Christine: Summer in Senegal!

This summer I am spending ten weeks Senegal, a small country in West Africa on the Atlantic Ocean. After a two week homestay, I will be doing a project for USAID/Senegal with three other students in my Master of Development Practice program. We will be working with USAID/Senegal’s Local Capacity Development Team to assess the capabilities of local capacity builders. What is capacity building? Generally speaking, “organizational capacity” refers to an organization’s ability to do what it sets out to do effectively and efficiently. “Capacity building” is a process aimed at strengthening an [...]

Read More

Leave a Reply