Capacity Development Learning Week

Capacity Development Lessons Learned and Community of Practice Workshop - Day 1

It was such a pleasure for our team here in the Regional Centre Bangkok to be surrounded by Capacity Development experts in the region. The CD experiences and knowledge shared by experts from Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Nepal, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Vietnam definitely serves as testament to the ongoing and successful CD initiatives in the region.

We were so excited to hear from our friends from Nepal, India, Bangladesh on their Capacity Assessment experiences. Although the context of each country was different, we were once again reminded of the value added of the Capacity Assessment framework - it serves as a viable space for all stakeholders to come together and effectively discuss the needs of the institution/organinsation being assessed! The lessons learned presented by our friends reinforced the fundamental objectives of the workshop: to bring together our work, to reflect on our successes and room for improvement, and create strong relationships between all CD practitioners in the region.

Speaking of relatioships, we also discussed the need and value-added of creating and launching a regional Capacity Development Community of Practice (CoP). We will definitely get into the details and start planning for this exciting CoP tomorrow.

The day didn't tjust end on Capacity Assessments and the beginning of a regional CD CoP, we also discussed approaches and methods to measure capacity development in order to evaluate our capacity development responses. There was agreement from the entire floor that now is the time to evaluate our own work, to codify lessons learned to ensure accountability from our part, and systematically report on what is being done! We definitely felt a sense of really moving forward from assessments and responses to implementation and evaluation!

It definitely was a long day. By the end of the day, we all felt a little exhausted but we were also excited. Tomorrow will be an even more rewarding day!

- Heidi Han, CD Policy Analyst