Badi Foundation :: Social Enterprise :: The Enhancing the Learning Environment Program

Badi Programs

Institutional Capacity Building

The harmonious development of society depends on the capacity individuals and the strength of social institutions. The Institutional Capacity Building Program (“ICB”) is the Foundation’s newest program, initiated in 2004 to address the need to nurture the development and strengthening of institutions and social structures of society, in addition to capacity-building at the level of the individual among rural populations in China. The Foundation saw that as more individuals gained the skills and motivation to contribute to their community’s development, organizational instruments were necessary to provide channels and means by which diverse individual contributions could be harmonized and channeled into orderly and systematic collective efforts to promote community well-being.

With such aims in mind, the Foundation collaborates with like-minded institutions, fostering the birth of new institutions and organizational structures at society’s grassroots and setting in motion learning processes designed to strengthen each organization’s capacity to advance the sustainable development of their communities. The Foundation typically identifies individuals from rural or semi-rural communities that are interested in pursuing full-time paths of service to their local communities and invites them for training during which they learn to implement either the Junior Youth Empowerment Program or the Environmental Action Program. Afterwards, participants return home and are assisted to form local institutions or structures to offer their program in a manner suited to the needs and conditions of the local community. Each agency operates with the knowledge of and in cooperation with local governments and institutions, and work to strengthen such collaborative relationships.

Key to ICB is the creation of a system of training and accompaniment organized around the strengthening of capabilities necessary for organizations carrying out social and economic development programs. Such capabilities include reading social reality and forming a vision, translating a vision into a program and implementing actions in a learning mode. Other capabilities include developing and managing financial resources, collaborating with government and like-minded institutions, and raising up and deploying human resources.

Since the program’s inception, the Foundation has accompanied organizations through an ongoing process of collaboration and accompaniment involving on-site visits and trainings as well as periodic regional and national seminars whereby organizations can come together to share experiences and insights and to learn from each other’s activities in the field.

Through the ICB Program, the Foundation is currently collaborating with over 24 institutions in several Chinese provinces including Yunnan, Sichuan, Guangdong, Hebei, Shanxi, Sha’anxi, Ningxia, Henan, Hunan, Qinghai and Gansu. Together, these organizations have trained over 6000 participants, including rural youth, rural women and local government officials, among others.