If a partnership arrangement is aimed at improving the wellbeing of the poor, it needs to reinforce opportunities for participation by the poor and prioritise participatory processes (see Chapter 6). Only with meaningful participation of poor householders and communities will services respond to their needs and build on their existing assets. However, communities cannot participate without having the skills to do so. The inclusion of participatory processes in a partnership arrangement must therefore be accompanied by the necessary training/capacity building. This not only requires the financial, human and organisational resources to be centrally placed within the framework, but it requires time. As such the programming of improvements will be affected by the initial capacity of the community and the execution of the capacity building process. Capacity building should acknowledge intra-community differences and target vulnerable groups within communities, not just dominant leaders. Women's groups may require confidence building and public speaking training, for instance, as well as team working and organisational formation skills training, as given to other groups within the community.
Apart from the community capacity building mentioned above, a pro-poor arrangement will consider the inclusion of other social and community development activities for poor groups. This is not without precedent; many water or solid waste sector projects delivered by government have realised the importance of developing social capital to increase the sustainability of project inputs. The past removal of such activities from infrastructure programmes involving the private sector (with notable exceptions) does not reflect the decades of learning about project delivery processes. Within infrastructure-related endeavours, social capital is essential to promote ownership, to encourage effective maintenance, and critically to ensure that the maximum benefit is being gleaned from the investment made. While the provision of physical improvements improves access, the development of social capital promotes the degree to which households are able to make use of the physical assets.