Before working for InsideNGO, I was an operations manager at InsideNGO member International Youth Foundation , supporting USAID-funded projects. My job entailed equal parts financial management, compliance oversight, and capacity building with local partners—and in many cases these roles were overlapping.
It was a busy but fulfilling role, and I especially enjoyed the capacity building aspect of it. Helping local partners to improve their ability to achieve results served both short- and long-term goals and was something I found to be enjoyable. But perhaps just as importantly, being prepared to build the capacity of others compelled me to understand our systems, procedures, and regulations at a deeper level than I would have otherwise.
Eight years ago, while at that job, I was given the opportunity to attend the InsideNGO Training of Trainers workshop. Although I had been supporting capacity building efforts for several years, I didn’t have formal training to help me determine how to properly design or deliver a training session or support a comprehensive learning process. My master’s degree in education provided me with a solid academic foundation, but it didn’t properly prepare me to help project managers in Pakistan fulfill leverage requirements or financial managers in Jordan comply with USAID regulations.
However, the InsideNGO Training of Trainers workshop did. It was a workshop unlike any I had ever attended, and I left with what felt like a comprehensive toolkit full of knowledge and resources to help me design and deliver capacity building that could make a difference.
But even armed with that toolkit, I quickly learned that effective training skills are not created overnight. Being able to adapt and deploy the tools in my toolkit required a more sophisticated understanding that I could only achieve through practice. I tried a lot of things that frankly didn’t work, but oftentimes the participants in my sessions were too polite to give me constructive feedback. So I was forced to speculate about where things went wrong and to cross my fingers that next time would be better.
Nevertheless, capacity building and training became a more and more significant aspect of my work, and supporting the teaching and learning process has since become my passion.
This is just the type of opportunity that would have accelerated my growth as a trainer following my participation in the TOT workshop. click here b2b videography tips