Organisation profile - Building Southern Research Capacity Project

International Service for National Agricultural Research (ISNAR)
Address:	P O Box 933752509, AJ The Hague, THE NETHERLANDS
E-mail:	isnar@cgiar.org
Tel:	0031 70 349 6100
Fax:	0031 70 381 9677
HTTP:	www.cgiar.org/isnar/
Type:	CGIAR
Sector:	agriculture
Geography:	worldwide
Activities:	research, research partnerships, training, networking, institution- building, policy development and funding
Budget:	c. USŁ 8.1 million in 2000 of which c.$500,000 was spent on 'research support'
Profile:	The International Service for National Agricultural Research (ISNAR) was established in 1979, and is based in The Hague, The Netherlands. It is a specialised agency of the CGIAR with a mission to support the institutional development of agricultural research in developing countries through: i) enhancing the capacity of agricultural research organizations to respond to their clients' needs and to emerging challenges; ii) expanding global knowledge on agricultural research policy, organization, and management and iii) improving developing countries' access to knowledge on agricultural research policy, organization, and management. The new medium term plan (2002-2004) focuses on institutional innovation through six thematic areas of work as follows: i) Policies for institutional innovation for agricultural research; ii) Linking research organizations and stakeholders in a changing context; iii) Learning for institutional innovation; iv) Management of new technologies for agricultural research; v) Building capacity to respond to cross-sector demands and vi) Entrepreneurial partnerships to support agricultural research.
Approach:	ISNAR's research and advisory services, include a management training program to strengthen national agricultural research systems (NARS) by developing the human resources needed to manage research. It does this primarily by training national trainers. Training activities are conducted in close partnership with NARS worldwide, with particular attention paid to those in sub-Saharan Africa. Training modules and materials are developed and made available to NARS trainers, management development institutes, NGOs, and universities. Needs assessments, training courses, and post-training evaluations and follow-up activities ensure the continued relevance of these high-quality international public goods, which appear in different languages (English, French, Spanish) and in various formats (hard-copy modules, CD-ROMs, and versions suitable for the Internet). ISNAR's Evaluating Capacity Development Project seeks to improve organizational capacity-development efforts through the use of evaluation. The project is designed to: a) strengthen participants' capacity to evaluate their own capacity development efforts; b) prepare a set of evaluation studies on capacity develop- ment; c) draw general conclusions about the capacity development and its evaluation; and d) disseminate the concepts and methods for evaluating capacity-development efforts.
Finance:	ISNAR is funded through the CGIAR systsem. The annual budget was c. USŁ 8.1 million in 2000 of which c.$500,000 was spent on 'research support
Notes:	Three guiding values underlie ISNAR's work: participation, learning by doing, and respect for diversity. Building skills skills in policy, organisation and management through training is one of the pillars of ISNAR's capacity-building work. At the organisational level, ISNAR promotes the 'learning organisation' through monitoring and evaluation. ISNAR believes that development assistance must focus on individual and organisational capacities, rather than on facilities and equipment, and that aid should create autonomy rather than dependence. Capacity building is creating autonomy (ISNAR 2000). See the web site for more details.