Interview with Ms. Rocio Bustamante, Centro Agua – UMSS, Bolivia

Sascha de Graaf (2006)

Summary of the interview:

What is the most valuable lesson you’ve learned so far (either from your work or from the symposium) about strengthening capacity for local governance in WASH?

The most important lesson that I’ve learned is that the government has to be involved in and committed to strengthen capacities for local governance. I know of two successful cases in Brasil and Mexico where they have got quite extensive and interesting programmes to support local capacities. In Bolivia, where I’m from, we don’t have that yet. We’re now aiming at getting programmes that will allow people to get better professional training and help them get access to better education, for instance through loans and scholarships.

What is the most important thing that sector staff should keep in mind in the context of strengthening capacity for local governance?

Sometimes you can plan for capacities to emerge and sometimes you cannot. Planned activities may indeed strengthen capacities, but sometimes they just emerge, even when you have not planned for them. So activities that are not meant to strengthen capacities or create knowledge may finally do so, in one way or the other.

What does ‘strengthening capacity for local governance’ mean for you in practice? Has it changed or will it change the way you (or your organisation) work(s)? If so, how?

I am involved in professional training, so that means a lot of academic work. I am going to change my approach and I will try to add some methods or approaches that I have learned through this symposium. Academics can sometimes be a bit far from the practice. So it’s interesting to see the methods of training and creating knowledge that NGOs and other organisations use and translate that to the academic world. For students it’s good to have more close contact with reality, something that you sometimes lose when you are working in an academic setting.

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RocioBustamante_Bolivia.MP3 (1.3 MB)

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Audio