Building local capacity has increasingly become a vital component of humanitarian and development programming. The problem, however, is when different groups have different definitions and expectations of what it should look like in practice — as in the case of Syria.
For some international aid agencies, capacity building entails holding workshops to train national organizations that are increasing in size and scope on how to manage their growing finances better or what to do when faced with a logistical impediment.
When you ask Syrian groups, however, their expectation is they will be trained on how to manage their growing and geographically dispersed staff, or write complex funding proposals to win grants from the U.S. Agency for International Development or the U.K. Department for International Development, two of the largest donors to the Syrian crisis.
About the author
Jenny Lei Ravelo@JennyLeiRavelo
Jenny Lei Ravelo is a Devex Senior Reporter based in Manila. She covers global health, with a particular focus on the World Health Organization, and other development and humanitarian aid trends in Asia Pacific. Prior to Devex, she wrote for ABS-CBN, one of the largest broadcasting networks in the Philippines, and was a copy editor for various international scientific journals. She received her journalism degree from the University of Santo Tomas.
