Capacity Building - Specification

Specification

Capacity Building is much more than training and includes the following:

• Human resource development, the process of equipping individuals with the understanding, skills and access to information, knowledge and training that enables them to perform effectively.
• Organizational development, the elaboration of management structures, processes and procedures, not only within organizations but also the management of relationships between the different organizations and sectors (public, private and community).
• Institutional and legal framework development, making legal and regulatory changes to enable organizations, institutions and agencies at all levels and in all sectors to enhance their capacities (citation: Urban Capacity Building Network).

It also interfaces with some work by the New Institutional Economics association led notably by the 1994 Nobel prize winner Douglass North. It tries to lay out the essential organizational and institutional prerequisites for economic and social progress ( See the paper by North, Wallis and Weingast) modestly entitled 'A conceptual framework for interpreting recorded human history', NBER working paper 12795, (www.nber.org/papers/w12795).

Capacity building is defined as the "process of developing and strengthening the skills, instincts, abilities, processes and resources that organizations and communities need to survive, adapt, and thrive in the fast-changing world." (Ann Philbin, Capacity Building in Social Justice Organizations Ford Foundation, 1996)

Capacity building is the elements that give fluidity, flexibility and functionality of a program/organization to adapt to changing needs of the population that is served.

Infrastructure development has been considered "Economic Capacity Building" because it increases the capacity of any developed or developing society to improve trade, employment, economic development and quality of life. It is also true that where institutional capacity is limited, infrastructure development is probably constrained. Currently the United States infrastructure is rated D or worse by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). This may be an indication that the Institutional Capacity of the USA is constrained and will impact future quality of life issues.