Capacity Building: Experiences from the Women's Voice and Leadership Sri Lanka Project

The project developed individual capacity building plans for all WROs and a consolidated one for the project, addressing WRO capacity building needs and identifying experts and expert organizations to support the capacity building of WROs. [...] While the Capacity Building Plan provided a strong framework, challenges to the linear implementation of the capacity building plan were brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic crisis, compelling the project team to adapt to the changing context and priorities of WROs and their constituencies. [...] While the project had to make provision for the distribution of digital equipment and training to enable this change, it also helped reach a wider number of staff (due to the reduced cost of travel and ability for more people to join the same virtual sessions) and enabled a wider and richer scope of content to be covered (due to the ability to conduct several online sessions at no additional cost. [...] The resultant capacity building process adopted for the project was a learning for the WVL-SL project although it was created by the necessity at the time of project implementation due to the challenging COVID-19 pandemic and economic crisis context and is considered a best practice of the project. [...] The project’s goal is to build the capacities and support the activities of local women-led women’s rights organizations and movements seeking to empower women and girls, advance the protection of the rights of women and girls, and achieve gender equality.