Text – Harriet Kongin
The course enabled me to widen my understanding of different approaches to capacity development. I could review my organisation’s understanding of CD within the context of our beneficiaries and target groups. This understanding has enabled my team an me to reflect on areas of improvement, especially the need to carry out organisational capacity assessments at the beginning of a programme, as opposed to midway or towards the end.
– Ms Harriet Kongin, Adviser, Policy and Strategy, UNAIDS Kenya
The course helped me integrate a lot of knowledge I had gathered over the years into a more coherent framework, thanks to the design of the course which followed a strict logical and temporal pattern, coupled with reflections on one’s own work.
The most important thing I learned is that capacity development should provide an opportunity for people to engage. This is how the course itself was organised, and I learned a lot more through interaction than if I was only given reading material.
The course taught me the theoretical aspects of the different stages of a capacity development initiative, such as assessing capacities at an early stage, assessing change readiness, and mapping a change process based on a theory of change. I knew the importance of these steps, but I hadn’t yet performed them in a coherent, sequential, and systematic way which allowed for adaptation to any given circumstance.
This course was the first e-learning experience that really convinced me! I’ve received the information I expected, and the exchanges and debates with the team and other course participants were really useful, meaningful, and instructive. I really appreciate the quality of the written material, as well as the references for additional documentation. I can now use all this information for direct inputs in my work and field missions.
This online course is a good combination of different methods: reading simple but good-quality material (with further references), chatroom sessions where you can reflect and share practical examples, and explanations of topics by experienced facilitators and moderators. I learned a lot during the course, starting from assessments of capacity needs to measuring the results of CD interventions. I will include some of the things I learned in my work, such as designing CD interventions (setting goals, objectives, and indictors), choosing a good fit of interventions, and measuring CD results.
The course was a great incentive for my career. I was looking for a course with practical examples, concrete explanations, and interaction with people with different experience and backgrounds. I got this and more. From a practical point, the course pace fit my busy schedule perfectly. It offered extremely interesting reading material, a dedicated and professional group of mentors, as well as updated case studies in accordance with the challenges we find in real-life situations.
I learned a lot from the experiences, knowledge, advice, and useful references shared by other course participants throughout this course which encouraged me to conduct capacity development projects in my work.
The course helped me grow not just professionally, but also in terms of my views on and approach towards capacity: how to approach change, types of capacities (soft and hard), how to design a change framework, etc. It offered an exciting opportunity to learn and interact with other learners online, and the course assignments were practical and relevant to the type of work I do. 
This course helped me better understand the fundamentals of capacity development. It was an enriching, interactive environment where tutors and participants alike could exchange ideas and perspectives on CD. It has also allowed me to tap into the experience of others, enabling me to think of better ways to further evolve my organisation’s CD modality into a more effective and sustainable solution for the betterment of humanity.
As an international consultant, I very much appreciated this course. It offered targeted state-of-the-art cooperation know-how, combined with well-moderated and thematically-oriented exchange opportunities between participants from all continents. I appreciated the one-on-one coaching, which accompanied the specific learning assignments directly related to my ongoing professional activities. I wholeheartedly recommend this course and look forward to staying in touch with this valuable network of cooperation practitioners.
As a novice in capacity development, this course was exactly what I needed. It equipped me with the in-depth knowledge and understanding that I needed, and broadened my perspectives in a very short time. Initially, the content sounded too complex, but by the end of the course, I felt better equipped with practical skills in planning, designing, implementing, and assessing capacity development initiatives.
