Oxfam Canada’s Capacity Assessment Tool for Gender-Just Organizational Strengthening
The Capacity Assessment Tool for Gender-Just Organizational Strengthening (CAT4GJO) is a practical, participatory tool that helps civil society organizations assess, reflect on and strengthen their organizational capacities to advance women’s rights and gender justice.
2009: Where it started
First piloted by Oxfam Canada in 2009, the tool was developed to provide a gender-sensitive, flexible and participatory approach to organizational capacity strengthening that could be used across diverse organizations and contexts and linked to program design, implementation, monitoring, evaluation and learning. This work informed Oxfam Canada’s 2012 Power of Gender-Just Organizations conceptual framework and toolkit.
2019: A revised toolkit
The toolkit was updated based on evolving learning and partner priorities. The revised CAT4GJO strengthened its focus on intersectionality, collective and self-care (including in digital spaces), environmental best practices and safeguarding, added supplementary workshop exercises, and intentionally shifted the language from “capacity building” to “capacity strengthening” to recognize organizations’ existing capacities, knowledge and experience.
2024: A triple nexus lens
Oxfam Canada integrated a development-humanitarian-peace (triple nexus) lens to the toolkit to better respond to organizations working across these contexts, particularly organizations led by refugees and internally-displaced persons.
The updated CAT4GJO supports organizations and their partners to identify strengths and priorities for growth, plan capacity-strengthening initiatives, and monitor changes in organizational capacity over time.
Author
Oxfam Canada