Local Capacity Building in Title II Food Security Projects: A ...

Local Capacity Building in Title II Food Security
Projects: A Framework
Suzanne Gervais
USAID Office of Food for Peace
Executive Summary
Although food security projects have always included capacity building activities, there
Occasional Paper No. 3
February 2004
is not enough monitoring, evaluation, and documentation of these activities to generate
occasional
lessons learned and best practices. The USAID Office of Food for Peace's new strategic
plan for 2004-08 will give a higher priority to capacity building activities within proj-
ects, providing an incentive for cooperating sponsors to more systematically conduct,
monitor and evaluate capacity building activities within their projects.
This paper establishes a conceptual framework for local capacity building within food
security projects. It is designed to provide Title II policy-makers and cooperating spon-
sors with a basic reference tool for the design, implementation, monitoring and evalua-
tion of projects’ capacity building activities at the local level.
This framework builds on the USAID food security framework, in which food avail-
ability, access and utilization constitute the three pillars of food security. It focuses on
the local level and, therefore, accounts for all actors who work toward food security
within a geographic community, such as a district, village or neighborhood. These ac-
tors include individuals, households and associations, as well as the local leadership.
Each plays a different and useful role in producing community food security. Commu-
nity food security is the result of their combined activities and efforts.
The framework defines capacity as the ability to productively use one’s asset base to
protect and enhance one’s food security. It further defines capacity building as a process
by which actors increase their abilities to use their assets and enlarge their asset base,
papers
or at least maintain it. This applies at the community level as well, where the asset base
includes the pool of public goods and where managers are the community leaders.
The local level capacities that protect and enhance food security, as well as control risks
and decrease households’ vulnerability, are divided into two broad types: analytical and
managerial capacities and general capacities.
Emphasizing capacity building in community food security projects has some impli-
cations for project design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation. It affects the
nature of beneficiaries, the time at which beneficiaries should be involved in the project,
the choice of project activities, the sequence of their implementation and the techniques
used in the process.
Monitoring and evaluation of these projects should look at the increments of the asset
base at all levels in the community and at the increments of the different actors’ abili-
ties to use their assets productively toward the protection and enhancement of their food
security.
Assessing the potential for sustainability of new capacities can include an examination
of: (1) the autonomy of the beneficiaries’ performance, (2) the availability of neces-
sary resources over the medium term and the community’s capacity to access them, and
(3) the sense of participation, including community support of volunteers who provide
services to protect and enhance their community’s food security.

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Contents
SECTIONS
1. Introduction
1
2. The methodology
1
3. Capacity and capacity building
2
4. Framework for local capacity building in Title II food security projects
4
5. Actors involved in creating food security at the community level
9
6. Monitoring and evaluating local capacity building activities in the context of community food security 15
projects
7. Recommendations to help in design, implementation and M&E of capacity building activities within
19
food security projects
8. References
21
ANNEXES
Annex 1: Monitoring and evaluation processes
23
Annex 2: Building an index for the measurement of local capacity building for food security
28
Annex 3: Resources on useful approaches and techniques for designing and implementing capacity
31
building activities in Food Security projects
TABLES
Table 1: Examples of assets and abilities in each category
3
Table 2: Example of how capacity building activities are instrumental to the achievement of project
7
component objectives
Table 3: Activities that are the responsibilities of the local administration and political leadership
10
Table 4: Activities that are the responsibilities of local groups
11
FIGURES
Figure 1: Enriching the food security framework
5
Figure 2: Major locus of action for the "Analytical and Managerial" capacities and for the "General"
8
capacities to enhance community food security
Figure 3: Basic M&E components of community’s capacities to enhance their food security
15
Annex 1 Figure 1: M&E framework
23
Annex 1 Figure 2: M&E of LCB activities in Title II food security projects
25
Annex 1 Figure 3: Monitoring the process of LCB in Title II food security projects
27
ACRONYMS
ABCD Asset Based Community Development
IR
Intermediate Result (from FFP strategic
objective)
CB
Capacity Building
CS
Cooperating Sponsor
LOA
Life of Activity
DAP
Development Activity Program
LCB
Local Capacity Building
DCHA USAID’s Bureau for Democracy,
M&E
Monitoring and Evaluation
Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance
NGO
Non-Governmental Organization
FAM
Food Aid Management
PVO
Private Voluntary Organization
FFP
USAID Office of Food for Peace
USAID United States Agency for International
Development
FS
Food Security
FSC
Food Security Committees
WG
Working Group
FY
Fiscal Year
UNDP United Nations Development Program
IPTT
Indicator Performance Tracking Table

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Local Capacity Building in Title II Food Security Projects: A Framework
1. Introduction
Title II Cooperating Sponsors’ projects have always emphasized building local capacities to enhance
households’ food security. In the past, these efforts were more often considered, monitored and docu-
mented as an important part of the process for achieving project results, but their outcomes and impacts
were not evaluated. This was due to previous USAID Office of Food for Peace (FFP) requirements that
did not consider capacity building as an acceptable “higher order” objective of Title II Food Security
projects.
With the transfer of the Office of FFP to the Bureau for Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance
(DCHA), capacity building activities are receiving renewed focus. The FFP Strategic Plan for 2004-2008
(currently under development) proposes as its strategic objective to “Reduce Food Insecurity in Vulnera-
ble Populations.” The first intermediate result (IR1) is concerned with enhancing FFP’s global leadership,
while the second intermediate result (IR2) aims to increase the field impact of the Title II program. The
pursuit of IR2 is especially relevant to capacity building. It will be achieved through the protection and
enhancement of human capabilities (Sub-IR2.1), the protection and enhancement of livelihood capacities
(Sub-IR2.2), the protection and enhancement of community resiliency (Sub-IR2.3) and the increase of
communities’ capacities to influence factors (decisions) that affect food security (Sub-IR2.4).
The Food Aid Management (FAM) Local Capacity Building (LCB) working group, consisting of cooper-
ating sponsors conducting food security projects under Title II, has been focusing on the issue of mea-
surement of local capacities that are built through their programs in the field. This is particularly timely,
as capacity building will receive high priority in the Title II program, and cooperating sponsors need to
report on their achievements in this area.
It is in this context that the current effort to establish a conceptual framework for capacity building at the
community level is taking place. The framework should provide policy makers and cooperating spon-
sors with a reference tool to examine programs and design, promote, monitor and evaluate their capacity
building activities at the local level.
2. The methodology
Previous efforts of the FAM LCB working group produced an in-depth review of Indicator Performance
Tracking Tables (IPTTs) from cooperating sponsor projects and constructed a database of all indicators
used to monitor and evaluate capacity building in the field from 18 PVOs/NGOs holding 84 programs
in FY2001 (Ferris-Morris 2002). A preliminary framework was sketched based on the monitoring and
evaluation (M&E) process, categorizing LCB indicators under inputs, process, outcomes and impact
while differentiating between various levels of capacities, such as organizations or systems capacities,
community capacities for self-development and individual and household capacities.
The framework presented here builds on the previous work, as well as new information provided by
cooperating sponsors about their current activities. New information was collected through a document
review and a short questionnaire about capacity building activities in the cooperating sponsors’ most
successful projects. Additional information came from an examination of related literature, including the
concept paper for FFP’s strategic plan for 2004-08 and commissioned papers leading to the concept paper
(Webb and Rogers 2003, Haddad and Frankenberger 2003). The FAM LCB working group organized a
workshop to generate inputs from the cooperating sponsors into this work-in-progress on August 27-28,
2003. Results from the workshop were incorporated into this paper.
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Local Capacity Building in Title II Food Security Projects: A Framework
3. Capacity and capacity building
3.1. Capacity
Capacity is often defined in terms of ability and performance. For example, the United Nations Develop-
ment Programme (UNDP) defines capacity as “the ability […] to perform functions effectively, efficiently
and sustainably” (UNDP 1997).
In the context of local food security, a community needs the ability to perform many functions, starting
with ensuring that food is available and accessible for all in a sustainable manner and that people can and
do utilize foods adequately. Additional critical functions relate to reducing vulnerabilities and increasing
resiliency for the entire community (Webb and Rogers 2003, FFP 2003).
One’s capacity to perform in any domain rests on one’s asset base and the ability to use it productively.
This capacity can be applied at the individual and organizational levels, as well as the community level.
Commonly, assets are categorized as managerial, physical or environmental, human or technical, financial
or economical and social (Green and Haines 2002; Mathie and Cunningham 2003, Lowe and Schilderman
2001).
For example, to produce more food, people rely on physical assets such as productive land and water.
They use their agricultural knowledge and farming skills, which are technical assets. Women selling
cakes rely on their savings or their access to micro-credit, which are their financial assets, to procure raw
materials for their income generating activities. They draw on the community’s physical assets as they use
roads and markets to sell their products. Local farmers associations providing agricultural extension ser-
vices draw on their technical assets to deliver sound agricultural messages, while they use their commu-
nity’s social assets when they use local branches of farmer associations in outreach to benefit individual
farmers. Table 1 gives examples of assets for each category and abilities to use them.
Thus, the “ability to productively use one’s asset base to perform a function” can adequately summarize
the working definition of capacity. This applies equally to individuals, households, organizations and
communities.
3.2. Capacity building
Whereas the concept of capacity translates assets and abilities into performance, the concept of capacity
building is associated with transformation processes and increments in capacities or performance. Increas-
ing capacities can imply broadening the asset base, but this is insufficient for enhancing performance. The
act of increasing capacities encompasses the enhancement of abilities to use assets productively.
Yet another dimension is crucial to capacity building in the context of development: sustainability. Build-
ing capacities would seem a useless effort if they were not sustainable. A major challenge facing food
security projects is ensuring their capacity building activities are not only instrumental to the success of a
specific project component, but that the new capacities will be put to use and contribute to the sustainabil-
ity of food security in communities over the long-term.
3.2.1. Increasing assets and developing abilities through food security projects
Title II food security projects comprise a number of components, most often corresponding to sectors of
development such as health, agriculture and economic development.
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Local Capacity Building in Title II Food Security Projects: A Framework
Capacity and Capacity Building
Part 3
Table 1: Examples of assets and abilities in each category
Category
Examples of specific assets
Examples of specific abilities to use assets
Managerial
Presence of systems (M&E,
Establish and use a local food security framework;
surveillance, sentinel sites, etc.). assess food security, risks and vulnerabilities
Presence of a local authority
in the population; devise food security and risk
that establishes local
mitigation plans; use information from the avail-
development plans
able local information systems; manage local
funds; advocate; be accountable and responsive
to population’s concerns; etc.
Physical and
Marketplaces and other infra-
Productively use and maintain infrastructures; use
environmental
structures, tools and manuals,
appropriate tools; use natural resources produc-
natural resources (water, soil,
tively yet sustainably; etc.
clean air, forest, mineral
resources, wildlife, etc.)
Human and
People’s education, knowledge, Maintain local literacy/numeracy programs in the
technical
technical skills, etc.
community; train new community workers (e.g.,
community health or agricultural agents, nutrition
counselors, model mothers in HEARTH programs,
workers in the growth monitoring programs, com-
munity proposal writers)
Financial and
Presence of financial institutions Use and manage credit; continue performing
economical
and credit schemes (institutional income generating activities after the removal
or informal), pools of investors,
of project support; attract investment and raise
access to financial resources,
funds; develop and market new products; etc.
well-established market circuits,
etc.
Social
Norms, shared understanding,
Local organizations actively promote food security
trust, networks, social and
behaviors, and conduct profitable income generat-
professional organizations,
ing activities; local political bodies link vertically
social safety nets, strong
and horizontally with various structures to protect
political leadership, etc.
and enhance their community’s food security;
communities mobilize to implement food security
action plans and participate actively in food secu-
rity relevant decisions; etc.
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Local Capacity Building in Title II Food Security Projects: A Framework
Food security projects can increase communities’ asset bases by investing in infrastructure and providing
other material and physical inputs, by developing new tools and by increasing the population’s knowledge
level in various domains, such as health, nutrition, agriculture, literacy, numeracy, accounting, bookkeep-
ing and specific techniques used in income generating activities. Furthermore, organizing and structuring
local civil society also creates new social assets in communities.
On the other hand, food security projects can build capacities by developing people’s abilities to use
and maintain their infrastructure, use their new tools, actually put in practice their new knowledge, and
conduct income-generating activities in an autonomous fashion with high potential for sustainability.
Increasing the performance of local structures, including that of government offices, to address local food
security issues is another way in which food security projects contribute to building communities’ capaci-
ties. An important contribution that rests more specifically with food security projects is building com-
munities’ capacities to establish their own food security framework and plan of action, promote a shared
understanding of determinants of local food insecurity and vulnerability within and outside the commu-
nity and identify risks to food security and develop ways to mitigate them.
The above examples show how capacity building activities in food security projects are, in essence,
slightly different than the sectoral activities, per se, although sometimes the difference is so subtle that
it can be difficult to perceive. One way of looking at it is that the focus of capacity building activities is
on the process of increasing abilities, beyond just increasing the asset base. Their results are reflected in
the practices and performances of people in various functions as they work toward achieving their food
security.
The overall sectoral activities may or may not include capacity building activities within their scope, but
they are usually designed to at least broaden the asset base. Their results have been reported in terms
of sectoral performances, such as yields of crops achieved and kilometers of roads built, or in terms of
human and social assets, such as increased nutrition knowledge and the number of new organizations
established in communities.
Disentangling the two kinds of activities can be made easier by using two different lenses to examine a
project or its components: one to examine assets and sectoral performances and one to examine the ability
to use assets productively and sustainably.
4. Framework for Local Capacity Building in Title II Food Security
Projects
This framework establishes the relationship between local capacity and community food security. It first
enriches USAID’s basic food security framework with the concepts of complementarities and synergies
between food availability, access and utilization and identifies potential risks communities often face
that affect their ability to achieve food security. It then presents two broad types of capacities that Title
II Food Security projects can build at the local level to increase communities’ abilities to enhance their
food security and manage the risks they may face. The other sections of this paper expand on various
local food security actors that can benefit from project efforts in capacity building, the implications of this
framework for project implementation and monitoring and evaluation of LCB activities in these projects.
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Local Capacity Building in Title II Food Security Projects: A Framework
Framework for Local Capacity Building in Title II Food Security Projects
Part 4
4.1. Basic elements of food security
4.1.1. Food availability, access and utilization
Food availability, food access and food utilization are the basic elements of USAID’s food security
framework. Figure 1 below shows that framework as a structure (like a table) with the basic elements as
its pillars. All three pillars are necessary, and none can sustain food security by themselves. As Webb and
Rogers (2003) write, food availability is necessary but insufficient to ensure food access and food access
is necessary but insufficient to ensure adequate food utilization.
4.1.2. Complementarities and synergy between food availability, access and utilization
In order to produce food security, all three elements must also act complementarily. This implies that
interventions that aim at strengthening any element must ensure that results will complement or enhance
the situation of the other elements of the framework and especially that they will not negatively affect any
of them. For example, if food production or increases in income are achieved at the expense of proper
childcare, then the child’s food utilization and health may become even more at risk, putting the child's
own food security in jeopardy.
Ensuring complementarities between the basic elements may require the broadening of an intervention to
include activities addressing the other elements. For example, when food production is diversified and
increased, it is important that families also learn how to utilize the new products and that markets can sup-
ply the necessary inputs for production, as well as absorb production surpluses. Ensuring the complemen-
tarities between the three pillars also brings about their synergistic effects. Better fed people can produce
a better work output and increase their capacities to manage their food security.
In Figure 1 below, complementarities and synergy are being added to the basic USAID framework. They
provide the link between the basic elements of the framework and give their purpose to these sustaining
pillars. Viewed from this perspective, it is clear that the pillars need to work together to “hold” food secu-
rity. Without ensuring the complementarities and synergies between food availability, access and utiliza-
tion, intervention results can weaken or jeopardize food security.
Figure 1: Enriching the food security framework
Food Security
complementarity & synergy
food
food
food
availability
access
utilization
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Local Capacity Building in Title II Food Security Projects: A Framework
Projects can build their staff and beneficiaries’ capacities, first to understand the links between these
pillars and secondly to ensure that their complementary and synergistic aspects are promoted to enhance
households and communities’ food security.
4.1.2. Risks and vulnerability
However, some risks can jeopardize the achievement of community food security. For example, loss of
harvest to severe pest infestation can disrupt food availability. Seasonal or sudden floods can isolate a
community from markets and job opportunities, reducing their access to food. An infectious disease out-
break can impair people’s ability to maximize their food utilization.
Webb and Rogers (2003) point to three large categories of risks, which can affect the state of any food se-
curity element or mitigate its contribution to food security. These are natural shocks, economic risks and
social and health risks. Some risks manifest themselves as sudden shocks and take the form of a crisis;
others present a quasi-permanent struggle for some segments of the population. In fact, chronic vulner-
ability is a major problem of underdevelopment. For example, poverty, mild malnutrition, ethnic and
gender marginalization, and powerlessness are a few determinants of chronic vulnerability that projects
can address (CARE 2003). Communities and households are all the more vulnerable when they are not
prepared to cope with risks and do not have the necessary buffers to absorb shocks when they occur. Re-
peated shocks can drive households or communities into a downward spiral of asset depletion, decreasing
their resiliency further with each strike.
4.2. Types of capacities food security projects can build in communities
The local capacities needed to ensure and enhance food security, as well as to control risks and decrease
vulnerabilities, can be divided into two broad types: “analytical and managerial” capacities and “general”
capacities, as described below.
4.2.1. Analytical and managerial capacities
Analytical and managerial capacities are capacities that enable populations and their leaders to discuss
and reflect together on their concern about food security, to assess the food security situation, establish
a food security action plan, target, monitor and evaluate food security activities, design ways to mitigate
risks and decrease vulnerability, advocate for food security and make other decisions that affect food
security at different levels in the community. These capacities broaden the communities’ understanding
and sharing of a food security framework and allow them to focus on food security in the midst of various
options for action planning.
Leaders in particular need to develop such capacities to promote the complementary aspects and synergy
between activities affecting food availability, access and utilization in their community, monitor and
manage the risks community members face and to reduce their vulnerability, promote the accumulation
of buffers that can mitigate shocks, and implement and target special programs that help families quickly
recover after a crisis.
Analytical and managerial capacities also apply to the organizational and household levels. The literature
offers many examples of building managerial capacity at the organizational level (Fowler 1997, Holloway
1997, IFRC 2000, Care Nepal 1997, INTRAC web site). At the household level, examples could be the
management and distribution of new resources or assets within the household in a manner that increases
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Local Capacity Building in Title II Food Security Projects: A Framework
Framework for Local Capacity Building in Title II Food Security Projects
Part 4
the food security of all members, or securing buffers that protect the household’s asset base when it is
facing shocks. These capacities can also contribute to increased bargaining power of the more vulnerable
individuals within the household, such as women with young children and elders.
4.2.2. General capacities
In this framework, other categories of capacity are grouped under “general capacities.” They are usually
directly associated with each food security pillar separately. They refer to those capacities needed to (1)
produce food and otherwise increase its availability; (2) produce income, control food prices and promote
food access; and (3) adequately utilize foods (in terms of consumption and/or in terms of physiological
utilization of nutrients). In many cases, these capacities materialize through capacity building activities
promoting improved practices and behavioral changes at the individual and household levels.
Most capacity building activities in this group are instrumental to the success of specific sectoral proj-
ect activities. For example, activities improving technical skills and transferring appropriate knowledge
about improved farming practices contribute to the success of project activities in the agricultural sec-
tor, which aim to increase food availability. Increasing mothers’ knowledge about appropriate feeding
practices for their young children contributes to the success of project activities in the health and nutrition
sector, which aim to enhance food utilization. Table 2, below, gives an example of how capacity building
activities in the Morulem project by World Vision International in Kenya are instrumental to the attain-
ment of the objectives of the component activity.
Table 2: Example of how capacity building activities are instrumental to the achievement of project
component objectives
Component activity objective
Capacity building activity
Capacity building activity’s
objective / desired outcome
To increase agricultural
•
Training farmers in
•
Farmers who are skilled in
production and achieve
appropriate irrigation farming
irrigated farming
adequate household level of grain
technologies
•
Farmers who have included agro-
production during years of normal • Training farmers through
forestry activities in their farm
rainfall to supply 80% of house-
participatory approach in agro-
•
Farmers who have started income
hold food grain needs
forestry technologies
generating activities that will cush-
•
Training farmers in income
ion them against a bad harvest
generating activities
•
Farmers who use animal
•
Training farmers in use of ani-
traction in farming activities
mal traction
In this example, capacity building activities are very closely linked to the agricultural component activity.
In fact, they are instrumental to the attainment of its objectives.
In summary and as illustrated in Figure 2 on the following page, this framework clearly shows the need
for and the relationship between the various categories of local capacities in the achievement of food
secure communities. General capacities are focused on assuring that the conditions necessary for achiev-
ing adequate food availability, adequate food access and adequate food utilization are met. Managerial
and analytical capacities are required to achieve the complementarities and synergy between these three
pillars. In addition, managerial and analytical capacities are required to assess and manage risks so they
do not block community food security.
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Local Capacity Building in Title II Food Security Projects: A Framework
Figure 2: Major locus of action for the “Analytical and Managerial” capacities and for the
“General” capacities to enhance community food security
Risks
mitigate
Analytical &
Managerial
Capacities
Food Security
ensure
complementarity & synergy
food
food
food
availability
access
utilization
Enriched USAID food security framework
produce
General Capacities
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