Organizational and institutional capacity assessment for Mji Mpya Community Development Trust in Ukonga Ward, Ilala Municipal, Dar es Salaam
Date
2005
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Southern New Hampshire University
Abstract
Like people, organizations learn, grow and change over time. They develop personalities, skills, and habits. They have talents, interests, and ambitions. Organizations experience success and failure, become distracted, forgetful, self-serving. Because organizations are the composite of the people who run them, it can be said that organizations get into trouble when they stop learning. One of the best ways of learning is evaluating or assessing itself to in order to ensure capacity and identify gaps for improvement. Organizational capacity is like personal competence; it is unique to the individual yet common to the human race.
Organizational learning is very important for improved performance and effectiveness in any organization. It builds organization's capacity for accumulating knowledge from its own experiences, disseminating that knowledge to members throughout the organization (and not to a single individual or group within it), reflecting on it and using it as a basis on which to build planning and programming activities, to adapt and to cope with change for example poverty reduction. A learning organization is one that facilitates the learning of all its members and continuously transforms itself. In this report, the learning was done through the organizational capacity assessment exercise of the organization in order to find out areas for improvement and existing capacity.
This project report seeks to understand the Organizational Capacity of the Mji Mpya Community Development Trust (MCDT) as a result of 15 months work with the MCDT, which is Community Based Organization (CBO), Mji Mpya, Magohe, Ukonga ward in Ilala Municipal. The assessment was done as a learning process, as well as giving an opportunity for MCDT in expanding from a CBO to an NGO. The assessment process became the beginning of the learning process for the MCDT members, however, the findings and recommendations made from the assessment are hoped to be a baseline that offers a continuous learning process for the organization. The main tool used for Data Collection was the Participatory Capacity Assessment Tool (PCA). The data collection methods with the PCA tool were Focus Group Discussions, through the use of Flash Cards, Problem Tree Ranking, Organizational Time Line and Interviews. The organizational components considered in the assessment were Governance, Management Process, External Relations and Program Development. The assessment also considered other important issues such as Gender, Participation and Gender Equity. All members participated in the assessment. A random sample of 5 mitaas from Mji Mpya area was also used for this study.
The results shows that MCDT is still at an infant stage and organizational capacity building plan was incorporated into the action plan for continuous learning and capacity building of members and employees. Several recommendations were made to enhance MCDT organizational capacity, to enable them taking off as a strong and sustainable organization with a purpose of making a difference in Mji Mpya. One of the major recommendations made in this report, was to incorporate the capacity building plan in the Strategic Plan that, will be developed by the organization (once registered). The process taken and analysis are discussed in details in the project report. (Author abstract)
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