CAPACITY BUILDING WORKSHOPS: WHAT, WHY AND HOW
If you want to know more about capacity building and practical ways of designing and implementing capacity building activities and projects, then mark your diaries now. The Cooperative Venture for Capacity Building (CVCB) and Australasian Pacific Extension Network (APEN) are holding one-day workshops around Australia in November on:

• what capacity building is
• when to do capacity building (and when not to do it)
• how to do capacity building.

• you’ll know exactly what capacity building is
• you’ll find out why agencies and organisations today are promoting capacity building
• you’ll hear practical ways of incorporating capacity building principles into your projects and designing activities to support capacity building and 
• you can meet and talk with people who are doing it now. 

There will also be presentations on local capacity building activities and an opportunity for participants to discuss their own experiences and issues to do with capacity building. 

The workshops will be run in November 2005 at the following locations: 

• Toowoomba (10th)
• Mareeba (11th)
• Darwin (14th)
• Perth (16th)
• Adelaide (21st)
• Melbourne (22nd) and 
• Wagga Wagga (23rd). 

Donwload the program here (Word doc)

For more information and to register please go to www.apen.org.au/events/2005wkshp11

For more information about APEN go to website www.apen.org.au

Work by the Cooperative Venture for Capacity Building (CVCB)* provides some helpful pointers on how to address burnout and other causes of group stress. 

As the result of a 2-year national review of extension and education across Australia, Jeff Coutts, Kate Roberts, and Fionnuala Frost identified characteristics of different extension models (see box) and used these, along with a lot of other information, to develop indicators for success. Landcare groups fall under the first group empowerment and facilitation model. 

According to the research team the key underlying philosophy of this model is that participants are best served when they are provided with a facilitative framework where they can define their own problems and opportunities and seek their own avenues to address them. This is about ownership and responsibility – but it is also understanding that it is the people in a specific situation that are best able to understand and act on issues directly concerning them. By encouraging people to work together in this way, more lasting and sustainable solutions are likely to result. 

Making successful landcare groups
Based on their research, Jeff and his team were able to develop a number of principles that contribute to the success of groups. While some of these are pretty obvious, the trick is actually putting the principles together and adapting them to specific situations to make them work. 

Self formed groups are best. Any facilitator or member of a group knows that if the group isn’t really interested in a particular issue or achieving a particular goal or being involved in a particular project, then you have an uphill battle to make progress. 

Related to this point is the fact that the group needs to be clear about the requirements for ongoing funding (assuming it is funded) and whether it is prepared to live within these requirements. 

Allow groups to find/select their own facilitators – with guidelines/boundaries. If a group is going to have a facilitator working with them the first thing is for members to agree on what they want the person to do and what their role will be. This means being clear about goals and elements such as reporting and responsibilities. Only after laying this groundwork should a group choose a facilitator. Facilitators need to be selected (preferably by the group) based largely on their facilitation strengths. They require strong support, both in terms of training in industry issues and in methods of supporting the empowerment process.

Provide support and training for facilitators. A big trap after a group has employed a facilitator is to assume that they can be left to operate without support from group members. Interaction and communication are crucial. After all the role of the facilitator is help the group achieve its goals, not to achieve those goals by themselves. Another element is to ensure that facilitators are allowed to take up any training that has the potential to help the group. 

Follow an annual planning cycle. It’s important for any group to develop a plan of action and identified outcomes. This way you can check progress and demonstrate that you are actually achieving what you set out to achieve.

Use benchmarks. This point is linked to the previous one. Benchmarking is a concrete way of showing that you are making progress. It is essential that as a group you set benchmarks against which achievement can be measured. It’s also a good idea to encourage individuals to benchmark.

You need to make sure that the ways that you evaluate your group’s progress are meaningful and related to the self-empowerment philosophy that the group is based on, e.g. the process used for making decisions, what decisions are made and reasons for them, changes against group developed benchmarks, extent of networking, and confidence and enthusiasm. Early training might be needed for group members in group processes (including conflict management), planning and evaluation.

Provide opportunities for groups/representatives to meet/interact with other groups. Looking at what other people are doing and how they are running their activities is a great way to learn and gather new ideas to apply to your own situation. Take all the opportunities you can to interact with other groups and other group members, e.g. develop partnerships and relationships with government, industry, community and other groups to maximise the benefits to group members.

Provide exposure to the wider picture (scanning) to help broaden options. This point is related to the previous one. All the good ideas don’t reside within the group. Take advantage of experience and ideas beyond the group to improve what you are doing. 

Encourage groups to become self-funding after an interval. This is a difficult issue but it must be considered, preferably when the group is being set up. The way most government funding works now is that it is available for a specific time period, after which it reduces or disappears. If you incorporate strategies and options for self funding when the group is being established, your group will be much better prepared and more likely to be able to continue on after government funding finishes.

A guide to assess groups under this model
As a result of their work in this area the research team developed a guide for assessing where your group is up to and where you might need to focus effort to ensure that your group stays healthy. Of course, this is a guide only and these elements may well be varied for good reasons.  The aim is not to have a mechanistic and mindless checklist, but to provide a series of prompts to help with refining activities and projects.
 

Summary
Keeping a group functioning and healthy isn’t an easy thing to do. Just as you need to work constantly on your personal fitness, watch your diet and not allow stress to overtake your life, so you need to work on your group’s fitness. If it’s time to give your group a health check, the pointers in this article will be a good place to start your analysis. 

More information
If you would like more information about this article you can contact Anne Currey, communications consultant for the CVCB, phone 02 6628 7079, email anne@naturallyresourceful.com.au.

* The Cooperative Venture for Capacity Building was established in 2001 to enhance capacity building in rural industries in Australia. Its goal is to instigate and support learning by farmer and rural communities by investing in R&D that focuses on; enhancing the understanding of learning, improving organisational arrangements to support rural human capacity building, and inspiring innovative farming practices. Its partners are: Federal Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry; Australian Wool Innovation; Dairy Australia; Grains Research and Development Corporation; Murray-Darling Basin Commission; Sugar Research and Development Corporation; Grape and Wine Research and Development Corporation; Land & Water Australia; Meat & Livestock Australia; Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation.