Short-term Capacity Strengthening Interventions Can Lead to Sustained Improvement: Learning from Capacity Strengthening Projects in Darfur

Sustained social change requires profound change among individuals, teams, institutions, and even the external environment. Enabling and strengthening the capacity of these actors and systems requires time and often intensive, customized resources. Yet those who could most benefit from strengthened capacity are frequently under-resourced and in need of short-term results. Facing these challenges in Darfur, Sudan, a consortium led by Catholic Relief Services developed a short-term capacity strengthening program that quickly improved key organizational functions. Data show that the partner organizations have sustained many improvements for more than one year after the intervention’s end.