6 Programme Management and Organizational Capacity-building
Part II: Building the Capacity of Sex Worker Organizations
6.5 Introduction
Organizational capacity-building is a comprehensive approach to strengthening an organization’ s ability to plan, manage and finance itself so that it can implement its own vision and strategy, rather than only responding to the vision of donors. In the context of HIV prevention and more broadly, this approach is of particular importance to sex worker-led organizations, whether they are already established or come into being as a result of HIV prevention programming.
The development community has a long history of capacity-building. 9 Early efforts generally aimed to help organizations manage the funds from a specific donor, or implement donor-supported technical programmes. Today, the approach to organizational capacity-building is to strengthen the organization as a whole, even where there is still a focus on improving the ability to implement a specific project.( In fact, capacity-building in the context of project implementation is generally more effective than organizational capacity-building in isolation, as it allows for practical application of the theoretical learning.)
Like other organizations, sex worker organizations face varying challenges to becoming stronger and more sustainable and benefit from different approaches. An established organization may have a better understanding of its community’ s needs and be better be able to lead the process of capacitybuilding, whereas a recently formed organization may need more guidance. But certain principles apply to capacity-building in general. Support should be:
• Comprehensive: Acknowledging all the capacity-building needs of an organization allows for a more systematic approach and the opportunity to address all the essential needs.
• Contextualized and customized: The support should address the cultural, political and social settings and should also address the specific needs of the organization being strengthened.
• Locally owned: Those supporting capacity-building may understand the processes and can help identify needs. But if the organization is not making its own decisions, capacity-building efforts will not be as successful.
• Readiness-based: The type, level and amount of capacity-building should be based on the organization’ s ability to absorb and use what is being given.
• Inward / outward-oriented: While it is essential for an organization to ensure the health of its staff and internal structures, it is also important to remember that any organization is part of a larger community and needs to understand opportunities for partnership and the potential benefits from external links.
• Sustainability-based: Capacity-building should strengthen an organization’ s ability to maintain a resource base so that it may continue to function well.
• Learning-focused: An organization that does not continue to learn about its functions, beneficiaries, community, technical areas, etc. will become stagnant and cease to be relevant.
9 Although the term capacity-building is used here,“ capacity development”,“ organizational development” or a number of other terms would serve equally well.
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