Values and Power of Capacity Building

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 or forum to jointly reflect upon such issues as:

• How power dynamics influence our choices regarding the design and implementation of capacity building processes?
• How explicit we are prepared to be about the values we ‘carry’ into the process?
• Whether we are prepared to embrace an approach to capacity building which brings values and power to the forefront, or actually are far more comfortable with the ‘technocratic’ or ‘instrumentalist’ approaches?
• Even if we wanted to, do we have the means and opportunities to analyse and ‘hold’ the resulting understanding of how values and power relations are influencing our work at each and every stage of the process?
• Is there scope to be talking about 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 1st phase of the Praxis programme wished to open a debate on the above.