Selection and capacity building for partner organizations

Awareness-raising with stakeholders will identify potential partner organizations. Selecting appropriate ones to work with, the responsibilities they would have and their current capacity is the next step.

Partner organizations are responsible for on the ground delivery of all the elements of the TREE program, and will also be involved in finalizing the design. Organizations should therefore have relevant experience and a good record in delivering one or more of:
  • Training and employment promotion for disadvantaged women and men
  • Market-oriented skills training
  • Core employability skills and life skills training
  • Post-training supports towards employment, self-employment or group entrepreneurship/cooperatives.
  • Market analysis, development and linkages
  • Credit, micro-credit and access to financial services
  • Business counselling
Experience in program design, delivery, monitoring and accountability are also relevant skills for partner organizations and support the long term sustainability of the TREE methodology and its application to new communities.

Criteria for selecting partner organizations include both their existing expertise and field of practice, their general fitness as an organization and their suitability for delivering elements of the TREE program. Consideration should be given to conflict sensitivity, for example to whether partner organisations are perceived as having a particular social identity (ethnic, caste, religious, etc.) that may be relevant to latent or actual conflicts.

Doc 2.4 Open surveys to identify potential partner organizations and Doc 2.5 Criteria for selecting partner organizations can be used to create a profile of potential partner organizations as the basis for selection.

Profiles of the potential selected partner organizations will help identify capacity development needs specific to each. In general, a capacity-building program for implementing partner organizations and TREE staff will provide training on the objectives, processes, tools, working methods and guidelines of TREE. This includes four main elements:
  • Community mobilization and assessment
  • Gender, equity and diversity in training and employment promotion
  • Skills and entrepreneurship training design, planning and delivery
  • Planning and facilitating post-training support.
Training may be through a series of workshops and follow up refreshers for all those involved, with in-depth training on some specialized areas (such as gender, equity and diversity) as required. Training needs at different stages of program design and delivery should be considered, as shown in Doc 2.10 “Capacity-building Programme Design for field staff involved in a TREE programme”.