Capacity building is valuable and important because of its many long-term impacts. For example,

• Capacity building approaches purposefully minimize an over-reliance on outside experts as sources of knowledge, resources, and solutions to community issues. By preventing a dependency relationship on outsiders from forming, capacity building encourages local people to take action on local issues themselves.
  
  
• Capacity building fosters a sense of ownership and empowerment, so that community partners gain greater control over their own future development.
  
  
• Strengthened confidence, skills, knowledge, and resources that increase from capacity building efforts on one project may enhance a community partner's ability to envision and take action on other projects.
  
  
• Capacity building efforts are sensitive to the particularities of local culture and context, and, as a result, often lead to more feasible and appropriate community solutions than approaches that lack a capacity building focus.
  
  
• Capacity building approaches to community work acknowledge that growth, learning, and change occur reciprocally; that is, both you and your community partner are expected to be different at the end of your collaborative community work. Ideally, your community partner will be more effective and successful in addressing community issues, and you will learn about working with community partners more effectively and respectfully.