Partnership and Capacity Development: How we strengthen our partners

Changes that everyone supports  

We want to promote development that offers all people a dignified life. But development cooperation is only successful and sustainable if international NGOs such as Helvetas work together with people, organizations, authorities and companies from the respective countries — when the changes that affect them are supported by them.  

Local actors also bring in-depth knowledge of the country context, know the challenges and needs, and enjoy the trust of the population. We work with them to identify challenges and develop solutions. 

Building local expertise   

Strong, reliable partnerships are essential for this. Building these partnerships also means empowering local people and developing their skills in such a way that they can continue the project independently and through their own responsibility in the future. 

Local communities learn to initiate development policy change processes. Helvetas' training courses include specific expertise and know-how, knowledge of financing and infrastructure, as well as soft skills such as networking, leadership and change management. This enables them to optimally perform their role. 

In the course of a project, local actors should increasingly take responsibility for a project and continue planning, financing and implementation independently. In the best case, this happens for an entire country program — as in the case of Bhutan, where the former Helvetas country program is now being continued autonomously by a local organization.  

Learning from each other 

Over seven decades of cooperation with our partner countries, we have acquired a wealth of experience. Helvetas has developed a comprehensive understanding of the contexts in which it works and the ways in which it can improve its work together with local partners. 

This also offers the opportunity to bring concrete experience to another project (in the same or a different country). For example, the suspension bridge project in Nepal was successfully introduced in South-South cooperation in other countries that face similar topographical challenges.  

Carefully selected partnerships  

Our partners are individuals, organizations, state or civil society actors and private companies. We enter into these partnerships on the basis of quality and exclusion criteria. They help us to assess the chances of success and sustainability of a collaboration, and ensure that there is a common vision and shared values. The criteria also help us to assess risks and ethical standards. 

Our services 

Helvetas plans and supports projects and advises other organizations and donors in the following areas: 

• Expertise in mainstreaming partnership and capacity development in strategy, programme and project planning in sectors and working fields including decentralization and local governance and market systems development
• Design and planning of feasibility studies and assessments
• Capacity development of individuals, organizations and sectors related to our thematic expertise
• Organizational development of civil society organizations, small and medium-sized businesses and public institutions
• Facilitating multi-stakeholder approaches
• Backstopping: Project backstopping; coaching; trainings; development of training manuals and material; creation of innovative tools; facilitation of workshops and change processes; capitalization of experiences; knowledge management tools and platforms
• Support in integrating partnership and capacity development in monitoring systems, mid-term reviews, end evaluations and impact assessments
• Geographical coverage: Our advisors in the South and the North provide support to projects in Africa, Asia and Latin America

Further information

Download and read our publications on different partnership and capacity development related topics.