En esta capacitación vamos ... I mean in this training we will
Capacity Building - this term often appears in development project proposals and reports. It encompasses how partners learn and develop abilities and how their capacities grow throughout the life of the projects. This aspect of development projects is important because we want to ensure that the partners we work with are able to continue their efforts even after the project comes to an end on our side -- making this component of the project key.
Earlier this month I had the opportunity to participate in a website management training for one of our partners. Our team had built this website last year and our partner was now ready to take over its management. This process encompasses a series of conversations to ensure the website was sustainable and built in a manner such that this hand off was possible. This included ensuring that the web management platform used was easy for others to learn in the future, among other topics. It also included in-country trainings to ensure that our partners had the necessary skills to manage the website.
Prior to coming to DC, our partners not only took a Drupal (the content management system we chose for the site) course , but also had to show us what they learned so we could adjust the training accordingly. As with any training, its easy to think you understand a concept but once you have to implement it you realize the gaps in knowledge. By showing us what they learned, we could tailor the DC training. Once all of these trainings and conversations took place, we were ready to have our week long DC training. For this training, I served as the English to Spanish (and vice versa) translator, which provided me with numerous lessons on trainings and capacity building initiatives.
Our week-long training kicked off (similar to most) with a review of the agenda and a discussion of what our partners were looking to gain throughout the week. Our agenda was comprehensive, well-thought-out, and we were ready to get started; yet due to a change in trainers, our agenda took a turn. We realized that a topic we were only going to lightly cover (linux and the use of putty) was actually a topic that piqued the most interest from our partners. They wanted to learn about linux commands and how this is integrated into their website, so we rearranged our training to provide them with as much introductory knowledge as possible and recommended they take a course in-country.
This was lesson one: even the best thought-out agenda can have gaps in information.
As the training went on, we realized that our partners were extremely interested in not just learning Drupal, but also programming languages like action script that were used on their website. It was exciting to see them so interested in expanding their repertoire of skills, but I realized how important it is to be able to manage expectations as to how long these skills take to acquire. Website management encompasses a number of skills, from front end skills like HTML to back end skills like server management. Thus it becomes important to prioritize. Are there skills you can develop in-house and others you can contract out? Which skills are crucial to the management of your project and should be prioritized?
This brings us to lesson two: capacity building is about expanding partners' abilities, but we need to be able to identify and prioritize which skills are crucial for their goals versus those that are nice to have but not necessary.
Serving as the translator for this week long session, I must admit that I was rather nervous. Like with all translating work, it is important to be able to convey and translate ideas and concepts, not just provide a literal word for word translation that may not make any sense in another language. I wanted to ensure that I was able to fully translate the concept that was being taught and that my explanations made sense. I also noticed how different trainers have different styles, which for a translator requires being able to quickly adjust to how they explain things and ensure that our partners are also adjusting to the new style. Translators also have the benefit of understanding what is going on from both sides of the table (the trainer and the trainee) and thus they become crucial in holding the session together and ensuring that topics are being taught effectively.
This is lesson number three: in bilingual trainings, translators need to be able to effectively communicate in both languages and preferably have a background in the subject matter so that they can effectively translate the concepts and not just provide a literal translation.