Danielle Dass
Senior Skills Consultant

Community development projects are central to the general upliftment and transformation underway in our country. The community capacity-building and ownership challenges in these projects are similar across different types of projects – land reform, water, agriculture, health, etc.

The development worker, whether employed by government institutions, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) or community-based organisations (CBOs), provides the key interface between the development institution and the community, thereby occupying a very strategic position determining the success or failure of the project. It is because of this key role that their skills, competencies and general capacity to effectively play this role have to come under scrutiny if we are to win the war against poverty and underdevelopment. This article examines the skill challenges experienced, particularly within CBOs, where job specialisation is rare and the development worker is expected to display a wide range of management, implementation and administrative skills.  

Development projects are aimed at meeting the developmental needs of vulnerable communities and to militate against the symptoms of poverty. To this end, development organisations focus their human and financial resources on a combination of projects such as technical support, research, social upliftment, delivery, advocacy and political campaigning and these are generally done by a core of committed community workers with a skills profile that ranges from illiterate (such as some home community-based carers) to post graduates working for more established NGOs. The gap between the least skilled and the most highly trained is one of the widest when compared to other sectors and has been cited in many evaluations as one of the reasons compromising the longterm sustainability of these vital organisations. The challenge for the development worker therefore is to become multi-skilled in project management, research and fieldwork techniques, among other skills, because they must be able to interact with a wide range of stakeholders (government, funders, communities, lobby groups, private sector and other NGOs). 

Access to a multi-faceted training course that meets the diverse needs of the NGO sector is generally confined to the tertiary education sector which is still inaccessible to the development worker. This may be as a result of entry level requirements, excessive tuition costs, geographical position or programme content (tertiary institutions do not always understand the challenges of the development worker and therefore offer learning programmes that are too generic). Many NGOs have attempted to negate these accessibility challenges by providing on-site training based on their experience, however, only a handful are currently SAQA accredited so the training is not quality assured and the impact of the skills transfer is not measured systematically.

Generic project management courses offered by universities and technikons are useful for development workers; however, Umhlaba’s experience in the sector has shown that greater emphasis must be placed on how to manage projects within a context of immense social complexity with multiple stakeholders. The current learnership system works well for development staff with little or no access to tertiary education – access to these courses can be done through Adult Basic Education and Training (ABET), Further Education and Training (FET) or Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL). Furthermore, the learnership model is designed to incorporate theoretical training with workplace experience so that formal training becomes an essential component of the organisation’s workflow. 

Based on Umhlaba’s experience – obtained primarily from project evaluations, Organisational Development (OD) interventions and technical assistance to donors and government – the following areas of learning need to become the foundation for untrained and under-qualified staff:

Module 1:  The Project Management Spiral

The spiral indicates the growth and development as the organisation improves continuously and moves up to a higher level from when it began. It is a learning organisation that is able to incorporate the previous years’ learning into the needs analysis and planning for the following year. This section should demystify the life cycle of a project and focus on how to manage each component optimally.

Module 2:  Monitoring each phase within the Spiral

Within the development sector, monitoring is inadvertently linked to evaluations which usually occur as a once-off process at the end of the project cycle. This is a fundamental weakness that we believe has contributed to the under-performance of many organisations within all sectors, namely government, NGOs and the private/corporate sector. Training should focus on how monitoring can be done at every phase of the project, approaches to use, designing tools and templates, timeframes, roles and linking it to staff performance.

Module 3:  Recording and reporting the learnings along the Spiral

The results from the monitoring process becomes the fuel which powers the organisation through subsequent phases and can become an early warning system indicating whether the project is likely to succeed or fail. Therefore, the recording and reporting of findings must have a high degree of accuracy, be timeous and consistent and should be understandable to all stakeholders. 

The modules proposed are aimed at setting a basic standard for development workers with varying levels of education and could kick-start a process of creating a pool of multi-skilled development workers whose skills profile (see below) also make them more employable to NGOs, government, global organisations and the private sector alike.

Ideal Skills Profile

As a proposed solution to the current geographic and financial inaccessibility of training, accredited courses provided through distance learning or online infrastructure need to be explored. Recognising that training in the NGO sector should ideally lean towards practical coaching and workplace mentorship; profiles of mentors, assessors and facilitators can be accessed on specified websites and these profiles could be classified  according to province, region, town or suburb for ease of use. This service will enable NGOs of all sizes to view profiles of accredited training providers, register online, access unit standards aligned training manuals, and benefit from face-to-face coaching, telephonic or e-mail mentorship.

The distance learning model will thereby reduce the cost of training, most importantly the NQF level 4 will create opportunities for life-long professional development of skills that are portable between NGOs, government and the private sector. 

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