Workshops on Capacity Building - 2012 / 2013 PDF E-mail

Capacity building remains a vague concept for most. There has been lots of discussion about capacity building, but no real clarity on how to implement it. Some use it as another term for Corrective Action Plans, others for training. Additionally, it is agreed there are many valuable efforts ongoing in this area, however these are often pilot-driven and there seems to be a lack of structure and resources to scale them up in a meaningful way.

To look into this issue, the GSCP is organising a series of Workshops on Capacity Building. These workshops will aim at developing a shared definition for capacity building and at understanding how it has been implemented by different companies in different locations. This should allow to outline industry trends and get a grasp on how auditing and capacity building can work together. The ultimate objective of these workshops - and the guiding thread of the series ‐ is to build on existing examples to articulate a framework for capacity building, with different open source models that can be replicated by companies based on their individual structure/needs. This framework should allow to address the issues of scalability, sustainability and effectiveness of capacity building efforts.

The workshops will seek to answer the following questions:

  • How does capacity building differ from remediation?
  • How can auditing and capacity building work well together?
  • What are the opportunities and limitations of capacity building?
  • Are capacity building efforts sustainable, and if not what's missing?
  • How can we scale up existing capacity building efforts?

4 workshops

The workshops will be held in 4 different locations over 2012 and 2013, kindly hosted by the GSCP member companies which gave the impetus to this project:

2012 where hosted by 2013 where hosted by
September 20th Burbank CA, USA The Walt Disney Co April 16 & 17 New Delhi, India Carrefour
November 28th Zürich, Switzerland Migros GB date TBC HK / China Phillips Van Heusen

Attendees

The workshops will bring together brands and retailers from GSCP membership and outside, along with audit companies, consultants, training organizations, MSIs and other initiatives. Suppliers and local stakeholders will also be involved in the 2013 sessions in China and India. Attendance will be limited and strictly 'by invitation only'.

Framework for capacity building

To develop the intended framework for capacity building, the GSCP will set up an Expert Working Group which will collate and analyse the output of each workshop. This group will be tasked with refining the shared definition for capacity building and developing replicable models as and where possible.
 
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