14 January 2014Implementing decentralisation of public policies requires adequate governance devices, but local actors also need new competencies to get involved in the new devices. What are the competencies required, and how can they be built? This paper analyses a Farmer University in Brazil to see how the actors trained have been able to mobilise their newly acquired knowledge for territorial development. We formalised the learning process as the construction of human, social and institutional capital, which, when combined, enable local actors to play an active role in governance. Our evaluation analyses how the students have become involved individually in different organisations, and how the collective involvement of these actors in territorial governance has been possible through the creation of a student association. Although the learning process helped in building the actors’ capital, several limits were identified, especially the difficulty in developing legitimate relations with other institutions in the territory.