Pamphlet: AVSI and capacity building

AVSI and CAPACITY BUILDING
The AVSI approach
AVSI takes a global approach to all programmes, considering not only the needs of the individual,
but also how the individual relates to family and community. The ultimate goal of AVSI’s work
is to develop a person’s capacity to take responsibility for his or her own life, while strengthening
the social networks people rely on for support.
Almost all programmes include components of rehabilitation and development strategies, and,
often, emergency relief. This allows AVSI to meet immediate needs, while always maintaining an
end target of self-sustainability.
The overall AVSI method is best explained through five key tenets:
• The person is the centre and the purpose of any development programme.
• All people and communities, regardless of their situation, carry with them a well of resources
and a positive place from which to begin.
• Effective programmes are designed and implemented with people, respecting local knowledge
and culture.
• Society is strengthened through support to families, community-based organisations and local
NGOs. This is based on subsidiarity—the idea that decisions should be made at the level that
is closest to the individual citizen.
• Development depends on the partnership created between social groups, local administrations,
and national and international bodies.

Building capacity with partners
In the early 1990s, Ketty Opoka and a handful of volunteers began dedicating themselves to caring for people living
with HIV/AIDS, providing guidance for children orphaned by the disease, and spreading awareness in their community in
northern Uganda. Today Ketty and her colleagues in Kitgum represent one of four Meeting Point offices in Uganda,
community-based organisations that support those who suffer in isolation and silence.
“We are all going to die,” says Ketty. “Having HIV means that death might come sooner; but the question is, ‘How did
I want to live before? How do I want to live positively with HIV?’”
AVSI works closely with each Meeting Point branch through programmes of food, medical and educational support for
people living with HIV/AIDS and their families. Meeting Point-Kitgum, where Ketty serves as chairperson, is one of 27 local
partners that make AVSI’s Distance Support Programme (DSP) for education possible. Spread across 15 Ugandan districts, these
organisations help DSP cater to the academic needs of 4,000 children.
By offering partnership, financial support and training opportunities, AVSI seeks to bolster the work of organisations
like Meeting Point as well as individuals like Ketty Opoka. This cooperative method strengthens both parties, as Ketty explains
in the following interview.
Question: What is your definition of capacity building?
Answer: To me, capacity building means to help a person. This could be in the form of training someone in job skills or an
income generating activity. In the case of Meeting Point, it has meant training someone in office management, including our
office accounts, as well as training women living with HIV/AIDS to manage and sustain activities that can provide them with
an income.
Q: As part of a local NGO, how have you seen capacity building come into practice?
A: Meeting Point-Kitgum has been working with AVSI’s Distance Support Programme, a project that supports children
orphaned by HIV/AIDS. One of these children has gone on to become a nurse, another an accountant, and many others are
now working in jobs and supporting themselves. In them, the theory of capacity building has taken root and made a tangible
difference.
Q: Are there things that might not have been possible for Meeting Point without its relationship with AVSI?
A: AVSI has given support to Meeting Point for several years. As a partner in the Distance Support Programme, individual
foreign donors provide school fees for children orphaned by HIV/AIDS. AVSI also works with World Food Programme to help
Meeting Point distribute food for people living with HIV/AIDS and their families. Finally, AVSI provides funds so Meeting
Point can buy medicine to treat clients’ opportunistic infections.
Q: Have you learned anything from AVSI that helps you in your work?
A: By watching and working with AVSI, I think Meeting Point volunteers have seen a greater value in the lives of people we
support. These are not mere beneficiaries or orphans; they are human beings with a need for love and dignity. This outlook helps
us develop a friendship with people living with HIV/AIDS, children supported by DSP and all those we serve. This is something
that’s unique to AVSI.
Q: What things do you feel AVSI has learned from you?
A: We compliment each other. Without Meeting Point, it would be difficult for AVSI to implement its programmes and reach
a real grassroots level.
Q: Have you gained anything from AVSI that helps you as a person?
A: I think my work with AVSI has helped instill in me a deeper sense of responsibility in my life and work. I consider each
orphan that comes to Meeting Point one of my own children. I follow them to their schools and homes, where I discuss their
performance and their needs. I have come to recognize that we are not here to give school fees to a child and stop there. We are
here to build a close relationship, a friendship, with each child.

Teachers and roads of discovery
A volunteer teacher stands before a small chalkboard in southern Sudan, a collection of 50
primary school students at his feet. He calls out letters of the alphabet for the students to repeat: “A,
B, C, D, E,” he shouts. “A, B, C, D, E,” they call back. The class works its way to Z and then begins
again. There are no notebooks and no pens, so the pattern will continue for much of the day, and
the children will still seem grateful.
Students in southern Sudan have grown up to a backdrop of war, in a world of uncertainty.
Today, they watch shaky negotiations for ending the 20-year civil war that has killed an estimated
two million people, and they ask whether it’s time to believe in peace. They remember planes that
fly overhead and drop bombs, and guns that can catch you in the crossfire. They worry about
Ugandan rebels that have carried their own war into southern Sudan. And they wonder whether
today there will be food to eat.
But in southern Sudan, where 75 percent of children are not enrolled in school and just 12
percent go beyond the fourth grade, the hunger to learn can override other concerns. 1 The promise
of education offers a hope here. It offers a reason to reject taking up arms, and it offers bigger dreams
for the future.
Many teachers in southern Sudan work as volunteers and a majority of them have no formal
training in education. Classes often take place outside, with a blackboard and chalk as the only
supplies. Despite the obstacles, local educators and administrators have started looking for ways to
improve education. Theirs is a formidable challenge as Sudan emerges from years of armed conflict.
While international agencies help respond to emergency needs, it is critical to maintain a view of
education as a component of interventions. Education has the power to foster children’s inherent
strengths, teach them how to protect their rights as human beings, and help build the cornerstones
for a peaceful society.
In 2003, the Diocese of Torit, long active in humanitarian relief in southern Sudan, helped
coordinate a program of sponsorship for secondary students and a teacher-training workshop.
Funding provided by the Italian Episcopal Conference was used to work with teachers to develop
interactive lessons using local materials and to explore new teaching methods such as drama, debate
and games.
To help teachers better understand and address the difficulties facing students in a region of
conflict, the training sessions introduced psychosocial needs as a key consideration in education.
Training in psychosocial needs, which is used extensively in northern Uganda, focuses on how
teachers can help children heal wounds. It is in this role—as a supportive presence for their
students—that teachers in southern Sudan realize their full capacity.
1 Number of students not attending school as estimated by the Consortium for Education and Training in Southern Sudan. Similarly, the
U.S. Agency for International Development estimates that between 20 and 30 percent of school-age children are enrolled. Number that go
beyond fourth grade taken from the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Technology as a tool for health
In Uganda, Catholic, Protestant and
Muslim medical bureaus run around 40 percent
of hospitals and 28 percent of rural health units
in the private sector. The Catholic Church
alone accounts for 27 major hospitals in the
country and 213 lower-level units. Its work
complements that of the Ugandan Ministry of
Health, which has expanded and rehabilitated
health services in an effort to improve overall
coverage in recent years.
For private providers, to maintain
operations and continue receiving government
subsidies, it has become increasingly important
to evidence the contribution made at the local
and national levels. Uganda, often hailed for its
progress in fighting HIV/AIDS, is looking for
what lies behind its success.
Many health providers, while offering
essential service on the ground, lacked the
equipment needed to easily share data and the
experience to analyse that data in depth. To
meet their needs, AVSI teamed up with the
local NGO Companionship of Works
Association (COWA) and the Uganda Catholic
Medical Bureau (UCMB) in an effort to
strengthen information, communication and
technology in Catholic health services. The goal
of the project was to improve data collection
and analysis, to gauge hospital performance and
to measure, where possible, the Church’s role.
In the first year of the initiative, all of the
Catholic hospitals and dioceses were sharing
data through an electronic network; but it was
clear from the outset that this was merely a
preliminary step. Equipment alone meant little
without an effort to strengthen human capacity.
UCMB and COWA also made it a priority to
train staff members at each location, who are
now able to operate, manage and analyse
collected data. In the end it is their work that
makes a mass of statistics comprehensible and
relevant for UCMB and the Uganda Ministry
of Health.
The government, taking note of the
unique collaboration and information from
Catholic hospitals and health clinics, has
requested similar data collection from other
private health care providers. The project laid
the groundwork for future cooperation among
private providers: An opportunity to make
information more transparent; to better
understand strengths and areas for
improvement in the health sector; and, in the
end, to deliver improved services to patients
countrywide.

Pillars of capacity building
In social teaching, subsidiarity refers to the belief that
decisions should be made and actions taken at the level closest to
the individual citizen. This preserves a person’s initiative,
industry and ability to contribute to community, and nourishes
a vital civil society.
Subsidiarity—one of the cornerstones of AVSI
philosophy and methodology—is dependent on individual
freedoms. If the individual, with freedom of choice and
association, is not maintained as the centre of development work,
it loses both its purpose and its most powerful agent for change.
The goal of subsidiarity is to strengthen a sense of
responsibility in individuals and in organisations working to care
for and develop their own communities and countries. This
implies a partnership with local organisations, sharing tools and
methodologies, and placing trust in the people that development
programmes are designed to benefit.
To implement this methodology, AVSI turns to capacity
building—transferring knowledge and skills that offer each
individual and community a sense of self-reliance. This means
respecting the historical and cultural reality in which they are
working, and how they wish to contribute. AVSI considers local
human resources the first and most valuable tools of any project,
and seeks to strengthen them by offering prominent programme
components of training and education.
Related AVSI activities
Capacity building is integrated into all AVSI
programming and, in most cases, works at multiple levels. For an
individual, it can take shape in vocational training, workshops in
AIDS awareness for youth leaders, and courses to offer teachers
theories and skills for the classroom. For an organisation, it can
mean administrative and management training for staff, or
participation in an international network of AVSI partners. And
for a community, capacity building plays out in sensitisations on
HIV/AIDS or a network of volunteers trained to identify
vulnerable families and individuals. Behind all of it is the belief
that helping people grow in consciousness of their own abilities,
helping them to gain skills and work opportunities, helping
them grow in their responsibilities and roles in society, will
improve society in the long term.
Experience from the AVSI network in Africa
Companionship of Works Association (COWA)
With its focus on vulnerable youth, COWA runs two vocational
training centres in Kampala, Uganda, and maintains a vital
educational presence in the country’s main holding centre for
juvenile offenders. Over the past 14 years, COWA has developed
a training programme based not only in skills, but also in helping
youth see the value of their own lives and the importance of their
choices.
Meeting Point-Kitgum
Born in 1992 out of a companionship during illness, Meeting
Point-Kitgum has become one of northern Uganda’s key nongovernmental
organisations working on behalf of people living
with HIV/AIDS and their families. As a partner to AVSI,
Meeting Point plays an essential role in delivering food support
to vulnerable households and following the education of children
orphaned by AIDS. Its work is echoed by sister organisations in
the slums of Kampala and in Hoima, western Uganda.
St. Kizito Institute
For more than a decade, this vocational training school has
been offering young people a path out of the slums of Nairobi.
As they study trades like carpentry, mechanics and tailoring,
students are guided in entrepreneurial activities and connected
with possible apprenticeships. Equipped with skills and
knowledge, young men and women leave St. Kizito better
prepared to build their own futures.
The Seed
AVSI helped establish The Seed Remedial School in Lagos,
Nigeria, the late 1990s, contributing to a national effort to
combat urban poverty. On the outskirts of the city, The Seed
offers remedial classes for youth who have been denied education
for reasons linked to poverty, HIV/AIDS or conflict. A new
educational centre brings children from different religions and
ethnic groups together to learn from each other, participate in
group activities and practice living side by side in peace.

Associazione Volontari per il Servizio Internazionale (The Association of Volunteers in
International Service-AVSI) is an international, non-profit, non-governmental organisation
founded in Italy in 1972. AVSI holds general consultative status with the U.N. Economic and
Social Council in New York and the U.N. Industrial Development Organisation in Vienna. The
Italian government and the European Union recognise AVSI as an NGO dedicated to
international cooperation, and AVSI is registered as a private volunteer organisation with the U.S.
Agency for International Development (USAID).
AVSI promotes cultural, social and economic development, especially in the most
disadvantaged in developing nations and countries in transition. Working in cooperation with
local organisations, governments and international agencies, AVSI has programmes in 32
countries of Africa, Latin America, Eastern Europe and the Middle East. In Africa’s Great Lakes
Region, AVSI has been present in Uganda for nearly 20 years and currently has programmes in
Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda. In sub-Saharan Africa, AVSI also has
initiatives in Angola, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria and Sierra Leone.
AVSI East Africa
Plot no. 1119 Ggaba Road
P.O. Box 6785
Kampala, Uganda
Tel. +256.41.501.604/5
Fax. +256.41.501.606
E-mail: communication.kampala@avsi.org
AVSI U.S.A.
420 Lexington Ave., Suite 2754-55
New York, NY 10170
U.S.A.
Tel./Fax. +1.212.490.8043
E-mail: avsiusa@avsi.org
PUBLISHED 2003
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