Capacity Building

SERVE works through a partnership model as we believe that partnership is the best way of achieving sustainable development for our key target groups. SERVE have 15 partners throughout the world. We support these partners in three ways:

1. Funding support for development projects or programmes;

2. Placement of short term and long term volunteers; and

3. Helping to build partner’s capacity in the areas of management, finances and accounting, monitoring and evaluation, child protection etc.

Volunteering to Build Capacity

SERVE’s ‘Volunteer to Build Capacity’ Programme assigns groups of volunteers to South Africa, Mozambique, Zambia, Brazil, India, Thailand and the Philippines for 4-6 weeks periods each summer. These volunteers work in a variety of sectors including education, childcare, house-building, healthcare and youth work. Since 2005, SERVE has placed a total of 755 volunteers with partners in the developing world.

SERVE’S Volunteer to Build Capacity programme acts as a catalyst for voluntary involvement, mentoring, development education, mutual learning and establishing links and networks based on trust. SERVE’s Programmes make a significant contribution to the infrastructure and service outcomes delivered by our partners. For example, there is a good representation of local community volunteers on the partner’s Boards – which suggests strong local ownership. It was also possible to measure the percentage of the partners workforce contributed by volunteers, through SERVE’s SDP programme in 2012 – the average result was 29%, which is a considerable contribution.

SERVE believes that many of the impacts of our Volunteer to Build Capacity Programme, especially in the areas of social capital, cohesion, personal development and empowerment, are immeasurable. Nevertheless, SERVE does have a responsibility to “tell the story” of volunteerism through case studies, opinion pieces and anecdotal evidence and do so with great success.

SERVE’s Agency Model

SERVE acts as the development agent for the Redemptorists. We represent the Redemptorists at Misean Cara.

Grants and capacity building support were provided to projects across the following sectors;

(1) Basic Education (25%);

(2) Water and Sanitation (15%);

(3) Rural Community Development (15%);

(4) Urban Community Development (12%);

(5) Human Rights (10%);

(6) Capacity Building (10%);

(7) Emergency (2%);

(8) Primary Health Care (8%);

(9) Environment (3%).

Additional information about the projects funded is available on the SERVE website at:http://servecharity.squarespace.com/sdp-reports/2012/

SERVE supported the capacity building initiatives of the Redemptorists in Africa and Madagascar. The capacity building initiatives during 2012 included:

(1) The training of Redemptorist finance personnel from seven Africa countries;

(2) The training of Redemptorist leadership teams from eleven African countries in the area of Child Safeguarding;

(3) The preparation, design and launch of a new website for the Redemptorist Conference for Africa and Madagascar- www.africaredemptorists.com ;

(4) The training of the leadership team of the Redemptorist Conference for Africa and Madagascar (COREAM) in the area of Strategic Planning;

(5) The provision of technical input in the formulation of financial policies for COREAM.