The Politics of Capacity Building

This morning I attended a capacity building workshop at MYDEL. It was facilitated by a friend of the chairman who assisted him when he initially began to form the organization. He challenged the staff members to reexamine their roles and responsibility in the organization as well as the function of the different departments. Because I have only been volunteering with them for a couple of days, this workshop really gave me insight into their strengths and weaknesses as an organization.
As a community based organization they lack financial support on every level and depend solely on donations from visitors. This has greatly affected their capacity and as an organization they could be so much better if they had more money or had resources to share to community members in order to help them develop their own income generating activities. In the same breath, however, I see a dependency on donor aid being formed in the sense that they are not actively pursuing funding because they cannot even surmise it being available to them.
This workshop also revealed serious gaps and weaknesses in the structure of their organization. They have leaders in place, but it seems as though those leaders are unaware of their official responsibilities and everyone does what they feel needs to be done. This attitude can make an organization very strong because tasks are always completed, however when they aren’t no one is sure who is to be held accountable.
The chairman explained to me that this is another weakness of a community based organization with leaders who were born and raised in the community, which they serve. Members of the organization are so comfortable with their leaders that they often blur the lines of business and pleasure. Because he wants to be as inclusive as possible, he makes every function of the organization known to the community, including financial matters. Though this is a genuine attempt at openness, as a leader there has to be issues that are confidential and only known to the executive in order for things to function in an orderly fashion.
By the end of the workshop, I had several suggestions for the organization and felt myself referring back to protocol that I used while I led organizations in college. I’m happy that that experience is coming in useful. Sadly, however, when I presented my suggestions to the chairman he agreed that changes were needed, but seem reluctant to put them in place. I hope that in the course of the next couple of weeks I am able to influence him a bit otherwise or he will find great difficulty in taking his organization to the next level or achieving legitimacy in the eyes of international donors, who sometimes focus more on an organization’s structure and they way they present themselves, than on the actual work they do in the community. I applaud MYDEL for its dedication and overwhelming involvement in the lives of each of its members, however, in such a bureaucratic world, talking the talk is sometimes more important than walking the walk.