Capacity Building for Effective Partnerships
An Active Review in Croatia, January-July 2007
Background / Contents / Purpose
This discussion paper on "Building Effective Local Partnerships: Organisational Challenges and Strategic Orientations" is the result of the active review "Capacity Building for Effective Local Partnerships", a joint project between the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the U. S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and implemented by the OECD LEED Trento Centre for Local Development, the USAID Mission to Croatia and USAID’s partner institution World Learning.
The objective of this active review has been to build capacities for local development through better governance by addressing existing local partnership initiatives, such as County Partnerships and Local Partnerships for Employment. The activity has been named an active review because of its setting that allowed participants to exchange experience and engage in a mutual learning exercise.
The review of local partnerships in Vukovar-Sirmium and Varazdin, two Croatian counties with different starting points in local development and a different composition of local assets, brings forward a discussion on ways to build the capacity of local partnerships in Croatia.
What needs to be done to enhance the capacity of partnerships to engage in policy development and delivery so as to make policy more participatory and responsive to local needs?
This report presents the main findings from the study. The report makes observations on the strengths and weaknesses of the current local partnership approaches and provides recommendations on how public, private and third sector actors could effectively join efforts, and provides examples of programmes in other countries that illustrate the sorts of approaches that could be taken to implement the recommendations.
The purpose of this report is to provide an external perspective on opportunities for the development of new forms of governance to foster local employment and economic development and promote innovative approaches to social inclusion. It aims to feed a capacity building process around innovative approaches and best practices, building on strong local partnership experience in a range of OECD Member countries.
Key messages of the report, in terms of suggested actions, are summarised in an Action Plan included in the Annex of this report.
Download the report, also available in Croatian
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