Mission

The purpose of the Capacity Building Programme (CBP) is to provide cost efficient, consequential and long term mechanisms to expand the capacities of our research partners in southern countries. Ideally, junior scholars benefiting from CBP funding directly connects or expands the research agenda of one of the DRC's Research Programmes:

Programme 1: Public Action & Private Investment
Programme 2: Collective Action Around Service Delivery
Programme 3: State Capacity

The CBP cannot and does not seek to replace the formal advance university training of our partners, but provides different opportunities to close the educational gap by providing partners with access to scholarships applications, by offering specialised training courses and access to multiple research resources, and helping to train instructors in southern research institutions

Goals and objectives

The DRC Future State recognises the challenges of identifying and supporting the most talented young researchers. The programme provides

• visiting fellowship opportunities to strengthen the potential of junior scholars and their home instittutions;

• Intensive study visits to the Institute of Development Studies;

• South-South visits and support for professional objective fieldwork are other activities funded by the CB programme;

For three years in a row, the CB programme has sponsored an Applied Research Methodology workshop to enable young researchers from around the globe to become familiarised with standard and innovative quantitative and qualitative techniques. In addition, dynamic English writing seminars ('writeshops') strengthen researcher's capacity to write for international peer review journals.

In June 2008, we launched our first intermediate advanced training workshops in applied methodology. These traiing modules were specifically aimed at researchers who participated in the June 2007 workshops.

Combined with online tutoring, international collaborations have been developed to improve southern partners' ability to publish research findings and seek competitive funding.

The workshop materials, as well as updated bibliographies from the three DRC research programmes are now available online, or in CD format. A thorough list of further options for methods training in the UK and elsewhere are also available.

December 2008