Community Mobilization and Capacity Building

Experience with CDD shows that communities already have substantial skills. Local capacity exists, but needs empowerment to be harnessed. This is a major conclusion of a technical consultation organized in Rome in 1997 jointly by the World Bank, FAO, IFAD, and others.
Some extracts:
Considerable institutional capacity already exists in communities and local governments. This capacity has been cloaked by a lack of local empowerment to use it. Any definition of capacity that focuses only on technical capacity will miss the huge potential that exists. Existing capacity is best defined as the ability to solve problems. People who have survived by trying to solve problems in difficult economic and political conditions have considerable capacity to put their experience and skills to work, once they are empowered.

Capacity building in communities is an important objective, but needs to be preceded by mobilization of community capacity that already exists but becomes evident only when communities are empowered. Empowering communities means that communities should have voice, decision-making powers, and access to resources.

Three key facets of community empowerment are:

• Organizing and improving community participation
• Financing communities through matching grants
• Targeting interventions to ensure the participation of socially excluded sections

Community empowerment will be unsustainable if it is not embedded in institutional structures. It is crucial to have linkages between the community and other stakeholders, and community empowerment needs to be accompanied by local government empowerment. It is important to ensure adequate political, administrative and fiscal decentralization. Local governments need to have both the authority and resources to plan and coordinate local-level schemes and provide local frontline services.