Content Development

There are many existing processes suggested for designing capacity building programs. To begin discussion, Mutoro (2013) developed the four steps of the capacity building cycle for the Rwandan National Capacity Building Secretariat This cycle involves 1. Setting up, 2. Identifying your needs, 3. Developing your plan and 4. Implement, monitor and evaluate. This shows that there are a number stages that need to be worked through (steps 1, 2 and 3) before a program is actually implemented. These include setting up partnerships and project funding, developing appropriate content to address needs and developing a project plan for implementation. The importance of developing partnerships is also supported by Jue (2011). Jue analyzed a number of engineering projects at MIT, USA and found that collaborating with a solid community partner was critical to the long-term success of

humanitarian engineering projects. Step 2 is important for the present research, as it requires the researcher to identify the needs of the community. It provides three descriptive levels of capacity building to assist in this, institutional, organizational and individual, where individual refers to “the skills, knowledge, competencies and attitudes of your male and female staff members to perform their role to the expected level of quality” (Mutoro, 2013, p. 15). While focused on large-scale capacity development programs this framework does provide four attributes deemed important to individual success, as shown in Table 6.

Table 6 - Individual levels of Capacity Building (Mutoro, 2013) Individual Level

1 Adequacy of skills, knowledge and qualification of male and female staff members to _{fully deliver on all their responsibilities} 2 Availability of highly specialised skills required

3 Alignment between formal values, mission and vision of the organisation and observed _{staff behaviour} 4 Team-spirit and willingness to work as part of a team reflected by all individuals

The levels of community member involvement in the PD process are also relevant to this planning section as they represent the ideological goals of empowerment in the PD process (Angeles & Gurstein, 2000). Of note is the Design Participation Ladder (see Table 4), designed by Hussain (2010), for work with rural Cambodia amputee children. While focused on PD with children it does provide a number of insights synonymous with all PD with underserved communities as its development centred on the unequal power-structured created through poor, marginalized community’s positons in Cambodia’s socio-cultural hierarchy.

These characteristics, as well as the collaborative competencies (see Table 5), were used to develop the learning aims and needs for the present research. At an operational level, the present study followed the seven steps outlined in the widely cited Oxfam development handbook (Eade, 1997). The seven steps are summarized in Table 7.

Table 7 - Seven Steps for Planning Capacity Building (Eade, 1997)

Steps Description

Aims (why) Clear, explicit and consistent with those of the people or

organization seeking training. Include monitoring and evaluation methods.

Learners (who) Consideration for homogeneity of group, selection methods (self- selection, selection by community or selection by trainers). Access (where & when) Consideration for work schedules/seasons, time to practice skills

and potential for on-the-job training.

Trainers (who) Important for facilitators to be experts in managing group dynamics and engaging participants as well as experts in content.

Needs Analysis (what for) Carefully identify learning needs, including monitoring methods to feedback to trainers.

Content (what) May include awareness, knowledge, skills or behavioural aspects. Should also include time for introductions and group building. Methods (how) Chosen to meet the learners’ specific needs. Appropriate education

and linguistics levels as well as culturally sensitive. The methods should challenge negative stereotypes.

While this capacity building stage needs to adopt the same flexible, context-sensitive approach as the design of PD methods it has the following additional benefits:

1. Allows participants to focus solely on the understanding of key design concepts, without the added cognitive load of trying to access tacit knowledge related to the project

2. Provides participants with small, simpler project examples or exercises to build confidence and a more holistic view of the design process

3. Allows participants to have more meaningful involvement in the actual PD project once it begins

The capacity building stage also required a number of critical considerations, such as: 1. Facilitating the stage in a way that does not create unequal power structures

2. Ensuring that community members ideas/opinions are not biased by their perceptions of what has been presented

3. Ensuring content and delivery style is at a level that is both appropriate for the participants and valuable to the project

4. Ensuring the time used for this stage provides more value than similar time added to the normal PD process

The implementation of a CCB stage is supported in several studies with one author stating CCB became an informal aspect of the project (Wilson et al., 1996). Another study concluded it could have been beneficial to “organize a short session to teach participants about the various stages in a design process” (Hussain et al., 2012, p. 97). Furthermore, capacity building has already been utilized in the development of technical skills for communities involved in PD. Winschiers (2006) developed community member computer skills and introduced them to appropriate usability principles to aid in the design and testing of prototypes. This was viewed as an important step as community members were co-developing IT solutions without a working knowledge of the limitations of computer systems. To effectively integrate CCB into a PD project, a clear integrated model is needed. The next section presents a new model to allow for this.