CAPACITY BUILDING:

We do Capacity Building to strengthen and enhance nonprofit organizations’ abilities to work towards their missions and achieving their set objectives. We focus in the areas of Organizational Development, Role of Board of Directors and staff, Institutional Strategic planning, Human Resource Development through providing training and development sessions, providing coaching and facilitation, supporting collaboration and networking with other nonprofits, etc.  In particular we target boards, role of CEO, programs, marketing, fundraising, finances, evaluation, etc. Capacity Building is aimed at improving organizational performance by effectively engaging both the management and the staff.

ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT: The elaboration of management structures, organizational structure, processes and procedures, not only within organizations but also the management of relationships between the different organizations and sectors (public, private and community).

ORGANIZATIONAL MANAGEMENT: Role of Board of Directors, role of CEO, programs, marketing, fundraising, finances, evaluation, etc.

INSTITUTIONAL AND LEGAL FRAMEWORK DEVELOPMENT: Observation of legal requirements especially filing of the mandatory/required returns; making legal and regulatory changes to enable organizations, institutions and agencies at all levels and in all sectors to enhance their capacities.

HUMAN RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT: By equipping individual staff members with the understanding, skills and access to information, knowledge and training that enables them to perform effectively. We discuss proposal writing, and adhering to funding source requirements e.g. quarterly returns. Our projects on Democracy and Human Rights have been very successful through this approach of empowering project officers of our collaborating partners in this area (Community Based Organizations and NGOs in each District) together with our outreach program officer.

STRATEGIC PLANNING: Preparation of Strategic plans and to facilitate planners to use the best strategic planning process to implement the plan to suit the particular nature and needs of their nonprofit.

However with our experience in this area we have realised that Local government, Communities and NGOs are the main clients who need empowerment and awareness through acquiring civic and knowledge skills, motivation, commitment and confidence. However, central government and the private commercial sector also need support. Community groups, often with strong NGO support, need to improve their capacity to plan, organize and manage their neighbourhoods. Departments of local government play an increasingly important role in enabling community groups to enhance their capacities and effectiveness.

The needs for Capacity Building are always changing. In its broadest interpretation, Capacity Building encompasses human resource development (HRD) as an essential part of sustainable development. It is based on the concept that education and training lie at the heart of development efforts and that without HRD most development interventions will be ineffective. It focuses on a series of actions directed at helping participants in the development process to increase their knowledge, skills and understandings to enable them to make decisions/choices from an informed position and to develop the attitudes needed to bring about the desired developmental change.

OBJECTIVES

The object of this programme is to eradicate poverty through improved economic, legal, administrative, systemic and political governance and through empowering women by supporting the establishment of social, economic and political institutions that will support a stable and sustainable development agenda.

Through capacity building, we could be able to assist Kenyans living in crisis or post-crisis regions to make the transition from humanitarian dependence back to community-driven development.

In order to ensure poverty eradication and to promote gender equality, CELA-Kenya envisions a major paradigmatic shift from the neoliberal economic orthodoxy to a development model that builds on a broad-based dialogue – inclusive of women, the poor, racially and other marginalized groups – between different interests about alternative economic policies and their social content.

Of critical importance is the recognition that "women are being hemmed in by two forces of fundamentalism: the fundamentalism of the market and cultural and religious fundamentalism that have brought the world to a dangerous juncture".

CELA-Kenya borrows seeks to focus on the establishment of a new social contract, at the community level, based on new alliances with popular forces, in particular women and their organizations, thereby fulfilling their rights to participate in decisions about policies that shape their lives, and recognizing their unique power to effect change towards people-centered, equitable and sustainable development.