Our capacity building practice is fundamentally influenced by the values we hold and the power dynamics in which we are immersed.

However, as practitioners we do not have a shared language to reflect upon issues such as:

• How do power dynamics influence our choices on the design and implementation of capacity building processes?
• How explicit are we prepared to be about the values we carry into the process?
• Are we prepared to embrace an approach to capacity building which brings values and power to the forefront, or are we more comfortable with ‘technocratic’ or ‘instrumentalist’ approaches?
• Even if we wanted to, do we have the means and opportunities to analyse and accept the understanding of how values and power relations influence our work at every stage of the process?
• Is there scope for a global ‘family’ of capacity building practitioners who are prepared to sign up to, and be held accountable for, an ‘ethical’ capacity building practice? What would that look like? Could we ever agree?

In the light of the increasingly dominant ‘accountability’ and ‘results’ agendas that influence capacity building processes, the first phase of the Praxis programme opened a debate on these questions.