The third I-PACS objective is to build the capacity of local Civil Society Organizations to design, implement, manage, monitor and evaluate their activities effectively, all with transparency and accountability. 

I-PACS interventions under Objective 3 have focused on creating a sustainable infrastructure to support the development of CSOs throughout Afghanistan. This infrastructure includes a network of 10 Afghan NGOs, Counterpart’s local partners for the implementation of I-PACS. The Afghan Civil Society Forum (ACSF) and the Afghan Women’s Educational Center (AWEC), based in Kabul, serve as Intermediary Service Organizations. Since 2005 Counterpart has been providing training and customized technical assistance to the ISOs in everything from community appraisal methodologies to operational planning to advocacy techniques in order to equip these organizations to provide advanced capacity building assistance to a network of eight Afghan NGO Civil Society Support Centers, located throughout Afghanistan. In all, I-PACS has trained 75 trainers, forming a cadre of trainers at Counterpart, the ISOs and the CSSCs who will be able to provide sustainable support to Afghan civil society for years to come. Further, organizational development assessments of the 10 partners demonstrated that 80% of these organizations had improved their organizational capacity by the fall of 2007.

The CSSCs, together with the ISOs, are providing direct training to 205 grassroots CSOs, including Community Development Councils, shuras/jirgas, NGOs and other organizations in every province of the country, resulting in 1,320 individuals trained to date. These local organizations were trained in three core modules designed to illustrate the basic nature of CSOs in a democratic context, to give these organizations the tools to help local communities identify their needs and articulate solutions, and to design sound development projects based on those needs.