Follow Us:
Change facilitation
By its very definition, capacity development implies facilitating or leading an entity to improved performance. This often entails helping different actors within an organization or across organizations to change and/or improve their interactions in order to bring about the desired changes.
Change facilitators do not only help to bring about the desired outcomes, they actively intervene in the capacity development process itself. The aim in doing this is to help the actors involved to engage, act and reflect on both the immediate challenge faced and the wider capacity development context. As the resources provided on this page show, the issues faced will vary considerably, depending on whether one is dealing with a single organization or network, or a broader multi-stakeholder process. Effective change facilitation requires a good understanding of, among others:
-
Different advisory roles and the related behavioural requirements for change facilitators;
-
Some of the underlying concepts and frameworks in change processes as well as a range of dialogue tools, methods and approaches used (for example action learning, social-organisational learning and knowledge networking);
-
Specific approaches and tools for dealing with contesting values, politics, power, negotiation, conflict resolution and transformation, and mediation.
-
Applications of these frameworks and approaches to specific change facilitation challenges, for instance multi stakeholder processes, social and public acccountability, and ‘value chain’ development
Several of the other topics featured on this website address aspects of these themes in more detail.
Featured Article
Barefoot Guide 3: Mobilizing religious health assets for transformation
Health, freedom and social justice cannot be
separated. In Africa, anything between 20-70% of public healthcare is delivered through religious
institutions or groups. The latest "Barefoot Guide" to organizational learning and social change
takes as its point of departure the notion that "Religious assets for health are everywhere, they
matter to a lot of people, and they can be mobilized for the health of all." Among topics covered
in the guide are: thinking differently about public health; working with and mobilizing religious
health assets; supporting the ‘leading causes of life’; understanding ‘healthworlds’ and the
strengths of ‘people who come together’; boundary leadership; thinking about systems; and ‘deep
accountability.’
Recent Articles
Strengthening local accountabilities in fragile contexts: Lessons from Nepal, Bangladesh and Mozambique
07 June 2013
IDS Working Paper 422 (April 2013) explores societal dynamics in fragile contexts and the role that external partners can play in strengthening domestic accountability through giving local project participants opportunities to "practise democracy."
MoreMonitoring the upscaling of health interventions
04 June 2013
Most development interventions consider the scaling up of successful practices as an important indicator of success. However, there is very limited understanding of what factors contribute to successful scaling up. This guide developed by the USAID-funded MEASURE Evaluation programme aims to provide governments, donors, country organizations, and implementing partners with a low cost and replicable approach to monitoring the process of scaling up innovations in health.
MoreUnderstanding market systems: Adapting monitoring and evaluation tools for practitioners
04 June 2013
It is difficult to predict changes in market systems, even after thorough market analysis and
strategic planning. This presents particular challenges for donors and practitioners in assessing
the impact of their development interventions.
Monitoring and Measuring Change in Market Systems - Rethinking the Current Paradigm
synthesizes the outcome of diverse consultations facilitated by USAID's SEEP Network between
2010 and 2012. The aim was to support practitioners to develop more effective monitoring and
evaluation frameworks for both market and financial systems.
Engaging communities in identifying beneficiaries of pro-poor programmes
13 May 2013
One of the main challenges countries face in effectively targeting social safety net
programmes is correctly identifying the poorest households. This January 2013 Brief highlights a
study by MIT's Poverty Action Lab that compared community-based methods of selecting who qualifies
for a cash transfer programme with proxy means tests. The study found that while participatory
methods were less accurate overall, they greatly improved local satisfaction and better matched the
poor’s own concept of poverty.
Mainstreaming climate change into community development processes
25 April 2013
Drawing on a district-level planning process in Thailand that aimed to mainstream climate
change into local development plans, the authors of this paper argue that the current process of ‘
predict-then-act’ climate change adaptation is inherently flawed. The uncertain nature of climate
change predictions can lead to dilemmas in selecting proper measures, whilst the long timeframes
involved hinders investment and distances stakeholders’ priorities. Furthermore, this sequential
process often overlooks the role of socioeconomic dynamics in changing countries' risk profiles
over time.
Systemic monitoring and evaluation: Insights for practitioners (Podcasts)
25 April 2013
This series of interviews conducted under the auspices of a USAID-supported market facilitation initiative is available for download. The podcasts explore the recognition that development takes place in a dynamic, complex system and the resulting consequences for monitoring and evaluation frameworks. The three interviewees - David Snowden, Shamim Bodhanya and Jeanne Downing - provide insights from research as well as practice.
MoreOther Topics
Essential Readings
-
Facilitating multi-actor change
-
M. Hemmati (2002) Multi-stakeholder Processes for Governance and Sustainability: Beyond Deadlock and Conflict, Earthscan
-
Pruitt, B. and P. Thomas (2007) Democratic Dialogue – A Handbook for Practitioners, CIDA, IDEA, OAS and UNDP
-
Wageningen International (2009) Building your Capacity to Facilitate Multi-Stakeholder Processes and Social Learning
-
Divine Thaw and Warren Banks (2007) Facilitating Development Processes: Working in the Unknown, Olive-PPT, Durban
-
De Caluwe, L. and H. Vermaak (2003) Learning to change: A guide for organizational change agents, Sage, Thousand Oaks, California
Featured Community
The Change Alliance: Using stakeholder processes and complexity thinking in governing for sustainability and social justice
The Change Alliance is an emerging
global network of organizations joining forces to increase the effectiveness of the
multi-stakeholder processes in which they engage. Its aim is to help improve the quality of
the design, dialogue, learning, and facilitation, on which these processes depend. The logic of the
Alliance is that complex problems demand a new dynamic of how governments, citizens, business and
civil society organizations work together. The Alliance facilitates a NING online learning
platform with interesting discussions, a Q&A section, blogs and announcements from
members.
Related Blogs
Using video to strengthen multi-stakeholder processes in West Africa
It is a vicious cycle that is becoming increasingly familiar across the world: more and more people with no alternative means of livelihood are increasingly dependent on a... read more »
Some advice for those managing large capacity development projects
Donors invest a significant amount of their... read more »
Delivering sustainable water services in small towns: what have we learnt?
The Millenium Development Goal (MDG) of reducing by half the number of people without access to safe drinking water was achieved in 2010, five years ahead of target [WHO/UNICEF... read more »
More Blogs