NVSC

For the past 2 years, the Newham Capacity Builders have been meeting as part of a sub group of Newham ChangeUp. The group has been facilitated by the BMECC forum and the purpose of the group is to bring together all organisations in Newham who deliver Capacity Building.

The group have worked together to produce a set of standards. These standards were presented to the ChangeUp Partnership last month and were fully endorsed.

The Capacity Building Standards were developed collaboratively and are aimed at giving local voluntary and community groups clear expectations of the basic standards they should expect from any second tier or ‘local infrastructure’ voluntary organisation that delivers capacity building – by which we mean support aimed at developing, strengthening and increasing sustainability.

Now that the Newham Changeup Partnership has signed off the standards there will be a period of peer and self assessment against the 17 standards. It is not envisaged that any organisation will be able to meet all 17 of the standards but the will be a continuous assessment and only if it can be shown that there is a commitment to working towards the 17 standards will the organisation be permitted to use the logo.

This has been an excellent piece of work and will hopefully be recognised not only in Newham but will be seen as good practise that could be shared across the country.