Dear Working Group 1,


As you may be aware, ‘Capacity Development’ is one of those terms that can be difficult to explain in a short conversation and yet we know that it underpins progress towards sustainable and safely managed sanitation.

To do it well, collaboration and coordination are key. To facilitate these necessary conversations among capacity developers or across other thematic sanitation disciplines, we need a tool so that we can all start from a common understanding, especially given the number of contexts and languages we bridge.

The WG 1 Factsheet has the potential to be this tool. And for it to represent the work being done and be useful for everyone, we need your input!

Below is the factsheet outline that resulted from the WG 1 meeting in Stockholm last August:

1. What is capacity development: The different levels
2. Simplifying/demystifying the complexities of capacity development (multi-level, multi-dimensional, multi-topic)
3. (new) Capacity needs & priorities to achieve SDG 6 and other SDGs
4. Examples of capacity development activities/approaches and outcomes
5. Overview of capacity development resources for capacity developers and for outreach
6. How to engage in WG 1

To start the revision process, those that volunteered to champion the various sections drafted outlines to guide input from the larger WG 1 team. Thank you Sandra, Daniel, Fabian and Dorothee for the outlines!

Now it is your turn!

So what are we asking? Please, review the outline HERE and add comments either to the google document itself or through the forum.

We are interested in the following:
• Resources/references to consider
• Examples to include
• Content (if you have more than a few minutes to contribute, we welcome your input)
• Ideas on how to simplify and make the document more accessible to those working outside of capacity development
• Vocabulary or words that you use in your day-to-day to describe ideas or words being shared in the document
• Sections to drop/remove
• OR anything else…

To get your thoughts going, have a look at the following:

1. 2013 factsheet
2. WASH Training Resource Forum Discussion and/or
3. SuSanA Library Section on Training Material (filter by training resource)

This is an open discussion and we will be reviewing the suggestions and discussion until we close it April 10th. We will then incorporate the comments and share a complete draft for input sometime in June.

At the end of the day, our hope is that we simplify how we speak about capacity development so it is easily understood by everyone, especially to those not working in this space. For us, it makes sense that the experts—the WG 1 members—are the ones making this possible!

We look forward to hearing from each of you. In the meantime, let us know if you have any questions.


Thanks!
Laura (CAWST) and Dorothee (Eawag) - WG1 leads
Daniel Ddiba (SEI), Fabian Suter (Eawag), Franziska Volk (GIZ), Sandra van Soelen (Simavi) – WG1 members

Hi Laura and all,

This is an important initiative and I'd like to bring your post back to the top of the pile, in order to encourage more responses. Also, I have just two small questions:

1) Is it going to be a completely new factsheet or you are planning to keep it similar to the 2012 version and just update that one? ( www.susana.org/en/knowledge-hub/resource.../library/details/167 )

2) Could I get you interested to consider improving the Wikipedia article on capacity development while you are at it? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacity_building I always go to Wikipedia when I want to know about a concept, and like you said: "Capacity Development’ is one of those terms that can be difficult to explain in a short conversation". The article currently has a C rating (so not very good). It might be too much work to revamp the whole article but one could think about inserting a section under examples which explains what capacity development means in the WASH sector and then citing some relevant publications.

Regards,
Elisabeth

Hi Elisabeth,

With everything happening with COVID-19 the factsheet updates admittedly fell off my radar and I suspect the radar of others in the working group, but that is no longer the case thanks to your post! (edit: a spin-off thread specifically about COVID-19 and remote work is now available here )

To answer your questions,

1) This is not meant to be a complete re-write of the Capacity Development factsheet, just a face lift with some simplifications. I personally would like to see capacity development better understood and accessible to both those within and outside the capacity development sphere. Often capacity development is over simplified to "trainings" or is so inclusive and complicated it becomes difficult to intentionally facilitate.

2) I encourage everyone to visit the wikipedia page on Capacity Building https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacity_building . It would be great if we could boost that grade to a B or A. After all, we are capacity developers. If one of the primary resources on capacity development is not easily understood, then we are not doing our job well.


WG1,

These are my questions to you:

1) What are some of your key capacity development activities?

2) What are the challenges that each of you face in describing your work or those activities? What do you communicate? And what do you feel is understood?

2) What words come to mind when you describe your work or capacity development? Maybe if we can identify the common words we use, we can brainstorm other, simpler ways of articulating the same thing for an external audience.

3) What are the top 4-5 areas (perhaps refer to the headings in the existing factsheet 2012 WG1 Factsheet ) that a person would need to know about to understand capacity development?

Please share! We will still move forward with the factsheet but progress on the document has been slow, so it makes sense to step back, discuss, and perhaps re-think what we are trying to create.

Thanks and take care,
Laura

I wanted to be part of the WG 1 reformulation of CD work and have been requesting and inputing on this topic.
I dont see anyone in this core group from South Asia or Africa represented in this group coordinators.

Look forward to hearing.

Thanks.
Depinder

Thank you, Depinder, for your comment. Agreed! We absolutely need better representation. Your input is most welcome!

This also goes as a reminder to anyone else interested, please, respond here. We will make sure you are added to any relevant correspondence. The more input and perspectives we get the better.

Again, the aim is for this factsheet to serve as a tool to better facilitate necessary conversations among capacity developers or across other thematic sanitation disciplines. We need a tool so that we can all start from a common understanding, especially given the number of contexts and languages we bridge. And for it to represent the work being done and be useful for everyone, we need input!

Last note,  there were some issues with access to the google document, so I edited the link in the original post. The issue should be resolved. If it is not, please please let me know as soon as possible.

The new link is:  https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IIEchl_cCkePcOeLmsUjksbyKOxyeUP2V36gbn_c_MM/edit?usp=sharing 

Thanks!

Dear members, 

Time has come - we kept you waiting for a little while but now a final draft version of the new Working Group 1 - Capacity Development Factsheet is ready! Before we consider it as final, we are asking for feedback and review from you, the SuSanA Community. 

Who can review? All SuSanA members and partners who are interested in / working on capacity development.

How to review? To make it transparent for all and easy for us to merge all feedback into one final version, please leave comments in the document below (by marking the respective text section and adding a comment through the speech bubble icon). 

Where to find the document? https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OPLW8Q3yOwLfxWAb_Oejlhi9xuCFMThU/view  

What is the timeframe? The final draft factsheet is open for comments and feedback until 17th February. 

Bonus work (for particularly motivated members) - we are still looking for graphics and/or images visualising some complex sections of the factsheet. If you or your organisation have suitable graphics and would provide them to the factsheet for public use, please contact the secretariat via This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

Kind regards, 
Franziska

Just a minor comment: I am surprised this factsheet has become so long (17 pages?). We used to have a page limit of 8 pages for the factsheets of each working group. Longer publications we used to call "thematic papers". Perhaps this has now become more like a thematic paper? It's so long that it should probably have a table of contents. And are you later going to apply the same formatting (i.e. the two columns per page). 
The 8-page page limit had the advantage that it encouraged authors to be succinct.

And just to reiterate what I said about a year ago in this thread: Please help to improve the Wikipedia article on capacity building as well. It already includes some of "our" pictures which is nice:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacity_building

Regards,
Elisabeth

Hi Elizabeth.

The Factsheet is long but is still a Factsheet. Editing may be required to cut down the text( for sections where it is too long and generic that can be sourced from other places), without deleting any section since we have spent a lot of time debating and finalising. 

Since capacity development is a very generic term covering several fields. Our contribution to the Wikipedia page on this topic, should be from our sustainable sanitation perspective of real life experience of capacity development in sustainable sanitation. The experience of Sanitation Capacity Building Platform(SCBP) as curated in a 3 paper series, with a Capacity Development Effectiveness Ladder Framework as an original contribution to understand effectiveness of capacity development - can be included as a Susana contribution in this wikipage. I am happy to work on this, let me know.

Dear all,

As we are closing the final commenting round now, we want to thank you for your comments, feedback and other forms of contribution to the WG 1 Factsheet. Even though this final round was initially intended to be open for just a week, we decided to extend it a bit more, as this was the final round and we wanted to give you the opportunity to take your time and make your final comments. 
So we say thank you!

The next steps for the factsheet will include the review and (if possible) the integration  of your comments, the addition of the reviewers as contributors to the fact sheet, the layout, and the decision on graphs and images, before it finally gets launched. 

Stay tuned & best regards,
Finn

Hi Depinder,
Thanks for your interest in contributing to the Wikipedia article on capacity development; that would be great! Any content that we'd add to the Wikipedia article needs to have a reliable source to go with it (i.e. no original research to be added to Wikipedia). The factsheet will count as a reliable source and so do your other publications with NIUA. Do you already have any particular content in mind that would be suitable for the broad "capacity building" topic on Wikipedia? I.e. not too specific or too much jargon etc., as we are writing for lay persons. If so, then do take up a Wikipedia login and then "let's go!".

By the way, it would be good if the factsheet was published under the open access licence CC BY SA because then it's even easier to reuse content from there on Wikipedia (or elsewhere). We had said in the past that all publications by SuSana use that licence. Please remember to specifically state the licence on the last page of the document so that it's clear. Thanks.

Regards,
Elisabeth

Yes the paper with the Capacity Development Effectiveness Framework is published by NIUA. This can be added. 
This describes what Effectiveness in Capacity Development means. 

Link : 
niua.org/scbp/sites/default/files/Capaci...dder%20Framework.pdf  

Hi Depinder,
Would you like to give it a go and add that content to Wikipedia? Or would you like me to do it. The more people from the WASH sector who know how to edit Wikipedia, the better.
Also, what about my comment about the licence, has the author team thought about that? Or maybe it's up to the SuSanA secretariat to decide.

Regards,
Elisabeth