ABCD-Training-of-Trainers-Tools-July-2013

• Engage in inter and intra departmental dialogue to improve co-ordination amongst government
agencies, NGOs and donors to streamline and standardize bureaucratic systems affecting
community organizations.
• Train and support officials to facilitate asset based development processes in terms of knowledge,
skills and attitudes.
• Critically examine whether grants to community organizations are decentralizing services to more
appropriate and effective community-level institutions (this is a good thing) or whether services
(and entitlements) are being neglected and offloaded from local government departments to
community institutions. Ask yourself: is this an activity that institutions can provide better or is
there a “value-add” in funding community organizations to do it?
• Engage in consciousness-building and paradigm shifting processes as a starting point of
developmental work and build a shared philosophy and understanding of mutual roles
• Ensure that communities understand the conditions (timelines, reporting schedules, communication
expectations) prior to receiving a grant.
• Investigate prior grants invested at the community level and ensure the grant amount is in line with
management capacity.
• Spend more time in communities prior to making the grant and thereafter, ensuring that they
receive timely feedback to feed into their own decision-making processes.
• Link community organizations to a multitude of support actors as opposed to holding on to them as
your “client” or “beneficiary”.
• Review your communications strategy. Is the language balanced? Are you highlighting a
community’s needs and deficiencies as well as their assets and strengths?
• Do not characterize communities as one thing: remember that while they do have problems and
needs, they also have strengths and assets. If you see them only as poor, they will see the same
thing.
• Provide periodic opportunities for community groups to “push back” and voice their opinions about
your support and engagement with them. Use ABCD as a way to gauge your organization’s
relevance. If their action plans consistently fall outside of your mission and mandate, then perhaps
you need to rethink your engagement with communities.
• Help community groups devise ways to ultimately become financially sustainable using their own
internal resources.
• Internationally, there are many stories of development actors who are trying to change the
“development conversation” by supporting and stimulating community-driven development. None
are as relevant as those that are produced locally. Deliberately “shine the light” on positive
134