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A new framework to support the national and local capacity building plan for disaster risk management (DRM) in Cameroon is presented. For the past 30 years, after the general re-organisation of the civil protection department, capacity building programmes for DRM has been solely carried out for and by the Ministry of Territorial Administration and the Department of Civil Protection. The exclusion of businesses, civil society and community participation, among others, has been the main obstacle to capacity building programmes undertaken for DRM. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Based on interviews conducted among 200 informants by means of a process of participatory monitoring and evaluation as well as a duo capacity building workshop for DRM held in August 2017 in Yaoundé, this paper evaluated existing capacity building programmes for DRM in Cameroon.

Findings show that the greater portion of government representatives within the public administration lack capacity to address DRM initiatives at the local and national levels of governance. While recommending DRM programmes as a necessity for integration within civil administrative curriculum, this paper proposes six elements to address capacity building gaps for DRM in Cameroon.

The results demonstrate critical gaps in capacity building aimed at DRM, especially where single ministry or department monopolises DRM. The findings provide the government with a useful tool to review its national strategy for a disaster reduction policy and the drawing up of a national intervention plan.

Although the value of community capacity building is widely accepted within scholarly literature, these initiatives thus far appear to have achieved very little impact in the achievement of community development aspirations. This paper aims to increase knowledge regarding specific priority areas which when targeted will result in more effective pathways towards sustainable development.

This study was performed through utilization of a qualitative strategy, which involved the combination of a number of qualitative methods and techniques including individual interviews, surveys, focus groups, literary review and policy analysis.

The investigation found that improving identified CSD priority areas, aligned with the sustainable development goals (SDGs), seems to be the most effective strategy to enhance the ability of local communities to overcome sustainability challenges over time. SDGs 9, 4, 15, 16, 17 and 8 were identified as the areas of greatest significance for practical community capacity building for sustainable development (CSD).

This paper answers scholarly literature’s call for greater investigation into bringing sustainability research closer to society, to clearly define research direction and agenda. It also recommends ways to action the global goals locally.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the role of languages and translation in the context of capacity building in NGOs in Kyrgyzstan. It argues that language barriers can impede local capacity building, while translation can help in overcoming some of the issues encountered.

The paper reports on what NGO workers have said on the role of languages and translation in their work in 34 semi-structured interviews conducted in Kyrgyzstan in January 2018. The discussion is structured around a theoretical understanding of capacity building at three levels: the organisational level, the individual level and a broader enabling environment.

First, the paper demonstrates that knowledge of English plays a key role in accessing international funding and information. Second, it describes the challenges that NGO workers encounter when translating information related to development into Russian and Kyrgyz. Third, it argues that donors do not overtly consider the important role of languages. Together, the findings suggest that ignoring the role of languages and translation can have a negative effect on project outcomes and power relationships.

Policy recommendations for international NGOs and donors drawn from this case study and from comparative case studies on Peru and Malawi have been published in Crack et al. (2018).

The paper argues that taking the role of languages and translation into account can result in a more in-depth understanding of aspects that may contribute to better local capacity building.

The Teen Entrepreneurship Competition (TEC) was an annual inter‐school competition that aimed to promote entrepreneurship education (EE) in Hong Kong (HK) secondary schools. This paper aims to: review and evaluate the implementation of the TEC over the years from 2003‐2010, and use the TEC as a case to demonstrate how EE can be advanced through capacity building in various ways and levels.

There were two key milestone phases for the TEC. This paper will describe and discuss the achievements made in Phase I and the capacity building for advancing the TEC in Phase II in details. Then, a critical analysis of capacity building for advancing TEC in Phase II will be made with a careful consideration of the TEC's design rationales, the research findings in Phase I and the three inter‐related levels of capacity building. Finally, suggestions will be recommended for further strengthening EE in schools.

The sustainability and advancement of the TEC are closely related to: advancing “Character Building” at the individual level, advancing “Partnership Building” at the institutional level, and advancing “Social Responsibility” at the societal level. However, the TEC might still overlook an alignment with the existing curriculum development. A further capacity building of course development and policy making should be sought.

This is a precious illustrative case study for the purpose of sharing useful information and genuine experience with those who are interested in promoting teen EE in schools.

Towns and cities across Canada face rapidly changing economic circumstances and many are turning to a variety of strategies, including tourism, to provide stability in their communities. Community Economic Development (CED) has become an accepted form of economic development, with recognition that such planning benefits from a more holistic approach and community participation. However, much of why particular strategies are chosen, what process the community undertakes to implement those choices and how success is measured is not fully understood. Furthermore, CED lacks a developed theoretical basis from which to examine these questions. By investigating communities that have chosen to develop their tourism potential through the use of murals, these various themes can be explored. There are three purposes to this research: (1) to acquire an understanding of the “how” and the “why” behind the adoption and diffusion of mural-based tourism as a CED strategy in rural communities; (2) to contribute to the emerging theory of CED by linking together theories of rural geography, rural change and sustainability, and rural tourism; and (3) to contribute to the development of a framework for evaluating the potential and success of tourism development within a CED process.

Two levels of data collection and analysis were employed in this research. Initially, a survey of Canadian provincial tourism guides was conducted to determine the number of communities in Canada that market themselves as having a mural-based tourism attraction (N=32). A survey was sent to these communities, resulting in 31 responses suitable for descriptive statistical analysis, using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). A case study analysis of the 6 Saskatchewan communities was conducted through in-depth, in person interviews with 40 participants. These interviews were subsequently analyzed utilizing a combined Grounded Theory (GT) and Content Analysis approach.

The surveys indicated that mural development spread within a relatively short time period across Canada from Chemainus, British Columbia. Although tourism is often the reason behind mural development, increasing community spirit and beautification were also cited. This research demonstrates that the reasons this choice is made and the successful outcome of that choice is often dependent upon factors related to community size, proximity to larger populations and the economic (re)stability of existing industry. Analysis also determined that theories of institutional thickness, governance, embeddedness and conceptualizations of leadership provide a body of literature that offers an opportunity to theorize the process and outcomes of CED in rural places while at the same time aiding our understanding of the relationship between tourism and its possible contribution to rural sustainability within a Canadian context. Finally, this research revealed that both the CED process undertaken and the measurement of success are dependent upon the desired outcomes of mural development. Furthermore, particular attributes of rural places play a critical role in how CED is understood, defined and carried out, and how successes, both tangible and intangible, are measured.

The aim of administrative reform— a special public policy instrument of governments— is to improve the capacity of public service delivery systems. This study examines the reform-led service delivery situation of public institutions at the local level in South Asia. The study offers an in-depth qualitative study with gleaned data, focusing on primary education in the country in relation to MDGs basic education. Local administration in the country has been a ‘low modicum of self-governance to provide public services. Institutional capacity dealing with educational management has called into question. Primary education in the country is quantitatively discussed while qualitatively is in a state of disarray. As a thorough academic qualitative study with a country-specific case has by far not been explored yet, it fills the information gap. Little is known about the public service delivery capacity with primary education at the local level. This study implicates governments and development partners such as the UN SDGs for effective partnership in development in an era of post-CVID-19 crisis.

The purpose of this paper is to explore and try to understand the human side of public sector reform (PSR) in local government in Ghana in the context of the challenges facing human resource capacity building and development policies.

Adopting an exploratory case study design, the paper triangulates both secondary and primary sources of data. Primary data were generated from self‐completing questionnaire and interview schedule tools covering 105 local government employees selected from national, regional and district levels. Semi‐structured interviews also solicited views from 16 senior public officers and managers in nine public and quasi‐public organizations. These primary sources were complemented with relevant secondary documents from the organisations investigated.

It was found that Ghana's PSR has significantly influenced the strategic direction of human resource development policies of the decentralized local government service. Major challenges in human resource capacity manifest themselves as related to policy, task, skill and organisation issues and performance motivation.

Addressing the human resource capacity challenges has enormous strategic and financial resource implications for policy makers in transitional and developing economies, due to their over‐reliance on external donors for funding.

Unlike previous studies, this paper did not explore HR capacity issues of elected officials; rather, it focused on the public servants (technocrats) implementing local political decisions. Of much value is that the results were derived from the experience of frontline local government staff, whose day‐to‐day inputs are critical for effective decentralization.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the identification of the existing capacities of post disaster C & D waste management in developing countries, with a special emphasis on Sri Lanka to determine the capacity gaps and related influencing factors.

Multiple case studies and expert interviews were conducted to gather primary information on the existing capacities of disaster C & D waste management. Three case studies, including 15 individuals and six experts representing government, non-government institutions and others, were selected.

The results revealed the existing capacities, capacity gaps and influencing factors for post disaster C & D waste management in the areas of skills and confidence building, links and collaborations, continuity and sustainability, research and development, communication and coordination, organisational implementation and investment in infrastructure.

This study limited disaster C & D waste to debris generated from totally or partially damaged buildings and infrastructure as a direct impact of natural disasters or from demolished buildings and infrastructure at rehabilitation or at early recovery stages.

The research enabled an analysis of existing capacities and identified capacity gaps in post disaster C & D waste management with influencing factors developing countries.