By Ellie La Trobe-Hogan
“The aim must be the training of independently acting and thinking individuals who see in the service to the community their highest life problem” – Albert Einstein
Einstein understood that any ‘education’, be it a training course, workshop or degree, needs to ensure that the individuals come out the other side not with the facts, but with the thinking. There is always theory to understand, but the real learning happens in the application of the methods and ideas to real contexts that require interaction with others.
As my colleague, Patricia Katto, mentioned in her article, in the climate finance space, capacity building / training is a well stated need to ‘unlock’ financial flows. While this is a valid point, I would take it a step further. Capacity building/training is a mechanism for increasing on the ground climate resilience, adaptation and mitigation action. That said, capacity building/training needs to consider:
- The number of people available to do the work
- The space to problem solve and apply theory to real contexts and challenges
- Methods or spaces for learnt experiences to be shared
- Collaborative networks
- Good relationships and connection
- Regional (and, where possible, global) reach
All of these points are being addressed by the Climate Finance Advisers Network, and the spaces that are created during regional workshops with advisors, governmental representatives, donors and partners. This initiative goes beyond a short term embedded model, and is working to build long term capacity and drive impact at both the country and regional level.
At this year’s CFAN Pacific Workshop, Grant Ballard-Tremeer and I were set the challenge of training on bankability, financial instruments and financial structuring. The driver for this being the gap in climate finance through traditional grant mechanisms, and the need for pipelines to convert to realities on the ground. As all of these topics are already included within the CFAN core module training which we helped to develop, we wanted to make sure that this was not simply a repeat of the theory that had already been delivered. We also knew there would be people in the room with less experience than the CFAN advisors, and who had not taken the online course. Our solution: create a financial structuring game, around sectoral case studies across the Pacific Island Countries. We removed all the PowerPoints, we created cards with the core theory for reference, developed ‘Chance Cards’ to bring in some real life unexpected changes to the scenarios and got the teams to compete for ‘Climate Cash’. The theory was included but the main learning came from working together. This included the application of the theory and the creation of connections, relationships and the feeling of ‘we are in this together’, over ‘I have to develop this project all alone’.
One of the themes that came up during the workshop was the opportunity of regional approaches and programmes. Structures and spaces like CFAN hold huge potential for regional mobilisation to increase individual country access. The Pacific Resilience Facility is one model that is presently being established through the Pacific Islands Forum. In addition to this, there is a Green Climate Fund (GCF) programme in development – Regional Programmatic Approach to Climate Action (RPACA) – led by the Cook Islands and Palau, supported by the Asia Development Bank (ADB). All of these initiatives and future ones, ultimately come about from individuals in connection with each other. Training can support the individuals to understand the theory better, but should also include the creation of knowledge sharing, problem solving and connection for real tangible impactful action.
The thing I love the most about my job, and role as trainer is people. People are amazing. People have all the problem solving skills and connection capacity to bring about real change in the world. As trainers, it is important to not try to be the expert. People of each country are the experts. Real capacity building requires a team, networks and heartfelt connection. Since training and capacity development is one of our key service areas at E Co, we’ve always centered people in our approach. We’ll continue using this approach in the E Co. institute, a global training platform that will allow people from all over the world to connect and learn more from each other concerning climate finance. Together we can solve the world’s toughest problems if we create the spaces to do so.
