Five Capabilities, hoe gaan we daarmee om?

20 april 2011 - Hoe gaan wij als Nederlandse ontwikkelingsorganisaties om met de instructie het Five Capabilities–model voor Planning Monitoring and Evalutation (PM&E) van capaciteitsontwikkeling te gebruiken? Deze vraag was het uitgangspunt voor leersessies met vertegenwoordigers van verschillende Nederlandse allianties op 20 april in Utrecht. Op dit moment zijn de meeste allianties nog steeds bezig met de fijnafstemming van hun monitoringprotocol, wat de sessie erg relevant en goed getimed maakt.

Lees ons Engelstalige verslag over de leersessies.

Five capabilities and an annex five

How are we as Dutch development organizations presently coping with the instruction to use the Five Capabilities Model for the PM&E of capacity development?

This question was the focus of a learning session with representatives of the various Dutch alliances on April 20th in Utrecht. On this date, most of the alliances were still in the process of fine-tuning their monitoring protocols, which made the session all the more timely and relevant..

Hoops and bottlenecks
Head of the PSO Department “Learning for Change” Rob van Poelje introduced the subject lively by illustrating how organizations are trying to jump through the various hoops that the grant provider has created in its effort to get a hold on the issue of capacity development. This was followed by an inventory of the bottlenecks in the use of the 5C model that was skillfully facilitated by Geert Phlix from ACE-Europe. Anong Boonchuey from War Trauma Foundation expressed the key concern that underlies the use of the 5C model: “Do I use it as an assessment tool for reporting purpose or do I use it for learning and self assessment?”

Discussing various approaches

Various approaches to Five C
A brief introduction to the basics of the model by Koen Faber from PSO and a simulation game that was facilitated by Marghuerite de Man from SIOO created a shared vocabulary and understanding of the Five C model.

The participants were then presented with different ways of working with the Five C model.
- The '5C coping' approach as a kind of accessory that organizations fit to their own monitoring system enabling them to interpret the outcomes with the 5C spectacles.
- In the 'believer' approach to the 5Cs an organization is inspired to explore new ways of looking at its own assessment instruments. This generates more reflection on capacity in their contacts with partner organizations, not explicitly enforcing the model on partner's own self assessment methods.
- The '5C reflection approach' had similar experiences as the believer model contextualizing the 5Cs to each particular organizational context.

Measuring, assessing, reflecting
Near the end of the session facilitator Phlix summarized the sub group discussions on the different approaches of the 5C model:
A (familiar) tension is felt between reflection processes and data collection: learning and accountability perspectives are mixed. Learning-oriented approaches are less suitable for aggregation of results and are often not served by scoring instruments. The main challenge remains how to measure capacity development meaningfully. Second important question is how to link the use of the Five C for organizational (self) assessment to the elaboration of relevant capacity development plans. After all, in these plans the relation of the Five C to development outcomes (MDG) and to a stronger civil society (CSI) must become clear. This leads to third question how to deal with assessments within the contexts of alliances, as some agencies may compensate lack of certain capabilities by participating in alliances.

How about that 'ceiling-effect'?

Reflecting on the outcomes of the day, the Ministry representative referred to the IOB evaluation on capacity development that has used the 5C. An important finding of this evaluation was the little information available to prove the sustainability of a result. Instead organizations and systems were more judged on their capacity to absorb funds. The present exercise must give an answer to this shortcoming. The place of capacity development in the result chain / the aid system was again touched upon. Participants warned that using the 5 C as a tool may lead to bias ('ceiling effects'), as once maximum scores have been reached, no new funds may be allocated.

No blueprints
Wrapping up, Rob van Poelje concluded that the strength of the 5C is that it provides no blueprints and that its serious application is very much a work in progress that we undertake together. He pointed to the PSO Thematic Learning Programme on Organizational Assessment where the 5C model will be further experimented with. He thanked all participants for their contribution and the Ministry for their presence and closed the seminar.

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