Institutional Strengthening
Whenever possible our projects embrace organizational and institutional strengthening. Our signature cross-cutting capacity building approaches include advocacy, information for development and knowledge management, network strengthening, and organizational development.
Advocacy
Empowered citizens, who are networked and speaking with one voice, have the potential to serve as powerful change agents who have an impact on policy making and the enforcement of existing policies. While most often associated with our democracy and governance work, advocacy is also relevant to the other sectors in which Pact operates. Overall, 25 percent of our projects include an advocacy component. In the HIV/AIDS arena, policies that defend the rights of HIV positive citizens or that promote universal access to free antiretroviral drugs might be the product of efforts by associations of People Living with HIV/AIDS (PLHIVs); in the NRM sector, networks of environmental NGOs might work together with NGOs concerned with livelihoods of people living in tropical forest lands to pass policies to protect the forest from clear cutting, while guaranteeing the economic well-being of villagers in these areas.
Pact helps our partners identify issues of common concern, plan effective advocacy messages and campaigns, build coalitions and networks that can articulate these messages, identify and target decision-makers who have the power to change policies, and implement successful campaigns.
Knowledge Management and Information Dissemination
An empowered citizenry must have access to high quality information and knowledge. Close to half of Pact's projects directly or indirectly serve to enhance our partners and beneficiaries access to information and its use for improved decision-making and performance in improving the lives of the most vulnerable.
Pact adapts its approach to knowledge management and information dissemination to best meet the needs of the target audience in a given context. In more technically advanced countries in Latin America, for example, Pact uses web-based platforms to encourage effective interaction among communities of practice in local governance and natural resource management to increase the sharing and use of best practices and lessons learned. In Mongolia, radio and television programs are used to share timely market information and disseminate behavior change messages. In parts of Africa, where the internet infrastructure is less developed, Pact's WORTH program works with newly literate women to communicate information about a wide array of topics through networks of micro-savings groups. The WORTH program in Asia has used these means to warn women and young girls about the dangers of human trafficking and to spread peace building messages through grassroots channels.
In the HIV/AIDS sector Pact seeks to provide our partners and the general public with the information they need to prevent the transmission of HIV/AIDS. In the D&G sector, many of our projects help citizens understand their rights and responsibilities under their constitution. Through knowledge management in the NRM sector, Pact works with CBOs, NGOs and local governments to map and plan for the sustainable use of resources, and share knowledge and experiences around ways to harmonize livelihoods with conservation and environmental protection. In the livelihoods sector we support development of radio programs and other media that disseminate pricing information to farmers, so that they are able to make better decisions regarding when to bring their crops to market.
Network Strengthening
In close to 40 percent of our projects, Pact helps our partners to build networks with their peers. These networks serve various purposes. A network of civil society groups, who speak with one voice, is far more effective in promoting policy change than a disparate group of NGOs. Likewise, the quality of service delivery can be greatly improved if the various providers, whether in the public or private sector, collaborate in delivering a coordinated and comprehensive package of services. This is particularly important in communities heavily impacted by HIV/AIDS, where families face multiple challenges at once economic, health and social discrimination. Strong networks can also enhance the economic power of producers, helping them by-pass middlemen and earn a better return on their products.
Pact utilizes a mapping software to help us better understand existing networks and to see how members of a network are interlinked. Once a baseline for an existing network is established, Pact seeks to assist our partners to define the appropriate functional network structure that links to their mission and the purpose they seek to achieve through the network.
Pact uses several different approaches to building and strengthening networks. We often work with cohorts of organizations within a sector or unified around a common concern. Our organizational development strengthening often precedes any explicit work to build networks. This process often involves multiple training events where the leadership and staff of peer organizations meet on a regular basis to learn together. These shared experiences serve to develop relationships that later serve as the basis for coordinated action.
Where this foundation exists, it is much easier to engage multiple organizations in defining their shared vision for action. A technique that we have found useful for this purpose is called the Theory of Change process. This involves a facilitated meeting of peer organizations, who together define a common goal and a logical cause-effect framework that serves as a road map to jointly achieving their goal.
A common vision is a critical step forward to building an effective network, but is not enough. Networks need mechanisms to keep them connected and moving towards their shared goals. These mechanisms can take many forms. They may be a small secretariat that facilitates the process and keeps all network members on the same page. Networks also need some means of maintaining communications among members. In areas where there is electricity and internet access, Pact helps partners build web-based virtual communications. In areas where this is not an option, links between network clusters can be achieved through regular meetings among representatives from each cluster. The WORTH program uses this approach. Pact helps our network partners choose and put into operation the right network mechanisms and communication systems to facilitate the network's steady progress to achieving its common goal.
Pact is beginning to use the network mapping software mentioned above to track the evolution of targeted networks over time and to assess the impact of our network strengthening investments.
Organizational Development
Well managed institutions are a fundamental building block for promoting changes that have positive impacts on the lives of families, particularly the most vulnerable. In most of our projects Pact invests in some form of building the organizational capacity of our partners, who include community-based organizations (CBOs), nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and governments. These investments help the public and private sector deliver better quality services in a more cost effective manner. For civil society organizations seeking to achieve policy changes, well-managed, sustainable organizations are better positioned to join hands with their peers to carry out campaigns for long-term, sustainable change.
The types of investment that Pact makes in organizational development (OD) vary from project to project, depending upon project objectives, the needs of our partners, as well as available funding. In most cases we start with an organizational assessment process that allows our partners to assess their strengths and weaknesses along multiple dimensions of management, including strategic direction, organizational structure, governance, planning, fundraising, and financial and grants management, human resource management, and monitoring and evaluation.
Based upon the results of these assessments, which are generally done with a cohort of organizations, we develop a tailor-made, capacity-building program, which usually combines training, mentoring, and one-on-one technical assistance. These OD capacity-building investments help partners develop and follow clear by-laws that enhance the transparency of organizational governance; they help NGOs develop a focused mission and strategic plan that builds off of the strengths and responds to the needs within the context in which they operate. Civil society groups and governments learn the basics of developing clear, actionable operational plans and budgets. Basic financial management and monitoring and evaluation systems are put in place, preparing our partners to successfully manage larger scale grants. Once systems are in place our partners are better positioned not only to manage the grants they receive from Pact, but also to compete for new funding opportunities as they arise, thus ensuring their long-term financial sustainability. In order to measure the impact of our organizational development investments, Pact generally reapplies our organizational capacity assessment tools in the second or third year of program implementation
