Micro level

• Explain to all stakeholders, including those within your own organization, what your objective is and the role you will fulfil in this process.
• Always bear in mind that everything is different there. Synchronize your Western pattern of expectations with the local reality.
• Be flexible about the objectives that have been set.
• In an unmanageable context such as the one in Zimbabwe, consolidation is a major achievement.
• Remember that you are working with an organization of volunteers. No matter how committed they are, earning a living is their first priority.
• The target group is not well educated. Providing knowledge and skills may serve a twofold purpose. On the one hand, it serves as an incentive and awakens interest. On the other hand, it teaches skills applicable within the organization or later on in practice. If the latter is the main objective, then a follow-up course is important as well. A single fundraising workshop, for example, does not make the participants qualified fundraisers.

Meso level

• Never become a solo operator: embrace friend and foe. In other words, use the multi-stakeholder approach.
• Team up, involve the stakeholders, but retain sovereignty.
• Protocol is sacrosanct.

Macro level

• Remember that programmes such as MHS will never be self-financing.
• Remember that funds for financing sports activities may be substantial but nonetheless insufficient to bring about community development and social growth.
• Train your organization to network and raise funds. Much depends on public awareness and funds.

Success factors for capacity-building

• motivation
• ownership
• expertise
• patience
• acceptance of the facilitator
• receptive surroundings

Success factors for strengthening local sports structures

• Always perform a multi-stakeholder analysis. Stakeholder analysis is the identification of the key stakeholders in the analysis and planning stage of a change process and assesses their interests and how these interests are likely to affect this process. It results in deciding whom to involve and how to involve these people in the analysis and planning (and tentatively in the change implementation) process.
• Make yourself indispensable and appreciated among the target group by tailoring the activities to relate to their sphere of perception and their needs.

Cees Versteeg