Share Fair Blog

Second Global AgriKnowledge Share Fair: After Action review #sfrome

2011-12-09T08:30:00.000+01:00

Post by Willem Bettink (IFAD)

Weeks after the closing of the Sharefair a large group of organizers, facilitators, volunteers, and presenters came together to do an After Action review (AAR). The AAR is a excellent knowledge sharing method to assess how things went: an event , a mission or a meeting. It allows you to benefit from the collective perspectives , experiences and learning of organizing and participating in a particular event.

The AAR for the Global Share fair was centred around a number of questions to collect people’s feedback. For example we asked: “What worked well and why?”; “What could have been done differently or better?”; “What surprised you ?”; and finally “What advice do you have for future share fair organizers”.

All expressed with enthusiasm that the Share fair was a great event given its spread, depth and diversity offered in the 9 themes resulting in more than 130 sessions. As one participant said: “The buzz in and around the IFAD building was very inspiring –I wish it could be like this always !!”

There was some very exciting and interesting stuff presented ranging from the numerous training sessions on knowledge methods, to more substantive topics such as “ how to extract fertilizer from marble dust”, how to improve working of a Community of Practice to three very inspiring and out of the box key note addresses by Etienne Wenger, Rob Burnett and Mark Davies.
People liked the market fair lay out with the tent and the bigger and smaller meeting rooms –best if they were emptied of meeting tables. The graphics and communication gave a very colourful and exciting ‘feel ‘ and transformed the IFAD building into a big open and creative and stimulating place.

Alas only 4 daily issues were possible of the Daily Corriere- after which it had to close ….. and the Chief Editor is looking for a new challenge…

The social media coverage of the Global Share fair was very good: from the thousands of tweets to introducing the live twitter wall , live webcasting of key note addresses and thematic sessions, over 50 blogs of sessions and multiple video interviews and tons of pictures. All of this social reporting material helped and added value to the event for those who could not attend it in person and enabled writing of parts this publication.

In short it seems that the Second Global Agriknowledge Share fair was a big success. But was there anything that did not go well or could have been done differently or better? Yes …there was quite a lot that AAR participants came up with as could have been better or could be improved:

The format and lay out of call for proposal, to be filled out and submitted by those who wished to present /share their story, was not done very well. It obliged the organizers to send out a second form to obtain a better focus by asking participants what would be the three take away messages ; and how they wished to organize their session and if they had any special requirements. In all this need to be changed for a future global share fair.
The registration process resulted in more than 700 participants over the 4 days. Doing the registration felt like a steep learning curve- from no previous experience, finding and losing our ways through the hundreds of emails, to becoming registration experts by the end of the fair. A lot to be improved here – from earlier responses needed to whom requested financing, to the visa registration process. A software application may help in making it less burdensome on the eyes and sleep of the human actor….
While people enjoyed the luxury choice from 130 sessions, it was felt there were far too many parallel sessions- consider quality versus quantity. Often one could not attend 1st choice due to the parallel nature. As one consequence several sessions had very few participants due to competing sessions. In future organizers should aim at a reduced number of sessions, thus allowing participants to go to more session and their preferred choices. Second one could try to join into one session similar topics e.g. a chat show as was done with social media , private sector and agricultural research.
The social reporting team should have been led by dedicated person(s) and set –up earlier e.g. a month before the event in conjunction with draft programme. This would enable better planning of full coverage of session, seeking out needed skills in the social reporting team and build-up momentum and sharing of ideas amongst the team members. Do not ask facilitators to be at the same time social reporters-it proofed to be hard to focus on facilitation and collecting information for a blog afterwards- quality of one or both may suffer!
Quality of content, presentation and chosen interaction during of sessions could be improved. First of all the facilitators of each session were identified and informed far too late, not allowing them enough time to interact and prepare with session presenters. Lack of clarity on knowledge sharing methods by presenters hampered inter-active nature of sessions. Finally consider better approach to determine the quality and richness of content at an early stage of submission for programme.
The training day was hugely successful and did not build further through the program. Next time have training opportunities woven across the four days.
An experiment tested at the KM4Dev face-to face meeting is that during the last day of a future Share fair, you ask people to spend 15 minutes to write a commitment to action. These commitment are then shared at the marketplace of commitments , so that people may find out what they can do together, harvest commitment to actions , and follow up 3-6 months to asseds what happened.

The above reflections, feedback and suggestions are just a selection of the wealth of insights harvested during the AAR sessions. We are going to solicit feedback from all 700 participants through a short electronic survey in early 2012. The aim is to assess what has been the impact of the Global Share fair on people’s behaviour, old and new work practices, and personal and professional networks. And in looking ahead we will ask you for new ideas, suggestions, or wishes you may have for any future share fair.

Food for cities: Power and potential of virtual communities (28)

2011-11-10T17:27:00.000+01:00

Post and videos by Julien Custot (FAO)

The FAO Food for the Cities multi-disciplinary initiative has organized a community theatre play for sharing with the public some issues related to “Food, Agriculture and Cities”.

This initiative is an internal inter-disciplinary and inter-departmental group. In the recent years, it has developed a global network of actors, from different levels of action and involvement, including local authorities, producers, researchers, etc. The food-for-cities global network is based on a DGroups list with 900+ members from all over the world (Email: food-for-cities@dgroups.org / http://dgroups.org/fao/food-for-cities). Information on publications, studies, researches, events, meetings, or related and relevant discussions are shared and proposed by members. No moderation is in place to enhance ownership and trust of the members.

The Second AgriKnowledge Share Fair was an occasion to make the public be aware of the topic by organizing a community theatre.

Starting from a Consumer’s point of view, the Share Fair participants have been involved in a transaction, complaining on rising food prices and the need for fresh food. The attention went then to the Market seller/street vendor’s point of view, explaining the reasons of this increase. It raises the question of transportation of fresh and perishable vegetables with issues on hygiene and sanitation as well as handling and storage.

A food middleman (Transportation sector) has entered in the scene reporting the rural-urban linkages on the basis of a city-centred food system. He complains on the lack of good infrastructures, the middlemen role and the heavy corruption from producers to market.

The Producers’ voice was also reported on inputs costs increases and access to land issues. It stressed the fact that small producers have no land or that access to land is difficult and costly. Besides, access to inputs (such as seeds and fertilizers) is always more difficult. He calls for establishing an association of producers to interact with local authorities.

All these actors were then reporting to their Mayor on all these problems, while he was discussing with a Nutritionist on food and nutrition security issues in their city, saying that fat people are indeed malnourished people, just as thin ones. She argued that if hunger does not seem to be a problem anymore, still good nutrition is far from being attained since it deals with diet, hygiene, care, health etc. Improper nutrition has a very high cost on the society (both in terms of health care treatment as in terms of diminished human potential).

In the meantime a Supermarket manager was argueing that the private sector could handle the food and nutrition security problems as supermarkets ensure a stable food availability and cheap food, relying as needed on international trade. Besides, as economic development means less time at disposal of women, supermarkets answer to new challenges of city life style, with changing consumption patterns and habits. He was trying to convince the Mayor to support his business due to cheap prices of food items.

The mayor stressed the fact that he needs a comprehensive approach to the food systems with the participation of all stakeholders. He will consider food in the municipal agenda and set up a multi-stakeholders platforms including consumers, probably a local food council.

Our food systems needs to be carefully planned recognizing the important role of each actor, enhancing multi-stakeholders platforms and assemblies! Join the food-for-cities network (email: food-for-cities@dgroups.org / http://dgroups.org/fao/food-for-cities) to know more, participate and contribute!

The EndingHunger movement (29)

2011-11-07T17:04:00.000+01:00

Post by Annika Vaughan (FAO)

The creative director, Scott Grove, of an award winning public outreach campaign shared his experience in successfully fostering creativity in a multicultural team. Explaining how the project developed from a petition drive to launching a global web portal, Scott talked about the challenges of pushing the boundaries of a conservative knowledge-based organization.

In spite of the obstacles, EndingHunger has managed to send out clear and energetic messages and attract a following that continues to grow. What are the keys to its success? About team management, Scott said, "Don't micromanage the team!" "Don't plan everything but leave room for spontaneous developments!" and "Give freedom to the team and let them come up with creative ideas”. On creating a powerful cause-related campaign, Scott stressed the importance of “Keeping the message simple,” and “Establish and stick with a strong visual identity”.

Experiences and lessons learned of rural transformation: Why institutions matter (39)

2011-10-10T16:43:00.000+02:00

Post by Andrea Rudiger (FAO)

In this session a group of four panellists presented and discussed examples from India, Ethiopia, Niger and East Africa for successfully building rural institutions, facilitated by IFADs Tom Anyonge.

Truly fascinating was the example from India presented by Judith (FAO). Women self-help groups or saving associations have working for almost 30 years in the Indian state Maharashtra. During the past five to eight years these groups started associating into federations. Two to three hundred women form community managed resource centres. The issues addressed by these groups go far beyond the traditional themes of a savings association. Women started proactively taking on social issues, such as domestic violence. They bring in banks for more project funding or experts, like livestock specialists when needed. Judith also openly shared what she sees as the three major challenges of these relatively new institutions: politicization, “overempowerment” and corruption.

A reoccurring theme across all contributions was the sustainability of rural institutions. Panellists identified links as key to sustainability. This means linking new institutions (1) to existing traditional organisations as well as (2) to higher levels of government. In most of the examples presented new institutions were created by external actors. For such structures to endure there must not only be support from local community, i.e. the demand or the need for new institution must be widely recognized. For such an institution to work there must be ownership by the local community. For external actors this means their role cannot merely be to put structures into place, but to build strategically the capacity of the members to own the institutions and to plan for sustainability.However, the building of new institutions often goes hand in hand with attitude change.

Especially when working in rural communities, we have to be a little more generous in giving time to identify and respond to the need for change.It was encouraging to hear how much awareness there is for the role of effective institutions in collective action, resource management, improved marketing of agricultural products, access to financial resources or more generally, in building better rural livelihoods. The grand words and the abstract concepts, which we often use when talking about social institutions make me aware how intangible institutions are and how difficult it is and will be to assess their effectiveness and sustainability.

Knowledge management planning

2011-10-10T12:20:00.004+02:00

Post by Edgar Tan

Knowledge management projects typically require significant awareness raising, education and change management efforts to get buy-in and participation from operational level managers. Such managers are often impatient with theoretical KM frameworks and concepts or high level strategies, and they can easily dismiss KM as too fuzzy and impractical to be useful. Knowledge managers frequently find themselves preoccupied with fighting defensive actions around understanding and buy-in, instead of directly planning, orchestrating and executing knowledge management strategies and programmes.

In the KM Planning workshop Edgar Tan and Kim Martins took the participants through a facilitated and staged participatory planning process using a set of performance support tools to:

diagnose specific pain points in the operations that can be supported through KM
identify cultural factors that support or inhibit more effective knowledge sharing and use
focus managers on the areas they believe are of highest priority to them
help managers identify appropriate KM approaches, methods and tools to support their priority areas

The value of a participatory planning approach is that operational managers are themselves working with the KM team to identify the main components of a KM intervention, rather than having a KM team impose a solution from outside. This removes much of the burden of getting buy-in (because prioritisation and selection of approaches are done by the managers themselves), and the awareness and education process is focused on explaining the approaches and methods that managers themselves select as possible candidates.

If you wish to see how the process works, read this blog post and watch the embedded video:http://www.greenchameleon.com/gc/blog_detail/conducting_a_km_planning_exercise/

Climate-Smart Agriculture – Yes, we can! (21)

2011-10-07T11:41:00.003+02:00

Post by Jeff Brez (IFAD)
Photos by Gauri Salokhe (FAO)

Yesterday we had an intense and lively discussion on “What is climate smart agriculture” using the “fish bowl” knowledge sharing method. Fish bowl means that there is a core group of speakers while the rest of the room, arranged in circles around them, listens in. The fun part is that the core group evolves as audience members join the “inner circle” one at a time, and the original speakers leave, one at a time, so that the discussion is enriched by lots of different perspectives.

Our core group consisted of Elwyn Granger-Jones (IFAD), Carlo Scaramella (WFP), Marja-Liisa Tapio-Biström (FAO) and Cristina Grandi (IFOAM). Our audience was not shy, and everyone had experience and specific knowledge to contribute. More than half of the 30 participants entered the “fish bowl” during the course of the session.

There was no consensus on exactly what climate smart agriculture is or should be. But – there are boundaries that seem to be forming. For example, most agreed that perhaps 80% of CSA is made up of what we already know how to do and are trying to do (sustainable agriculture approaches such as integrated pest management, organic and conservation agriculture). However, there is a tricky and evasive 20% of CSA that is new, linked to emerging challenges that climate change brings about, and riddled with uncertainty.

There was also consensus that the concept is strongly influencing the planning and thinking of the ARD development community, and that it presents an opportunity to catalyze the move towards an integrated, cross-sectoral approach to agriculture and food security linking it with other challenges to sustainable development and poverty reduction. Yes, mindsets are being changed already, but what is missing is a global vision for agriculture, including the role of smallholders, that climate smart practices would fit into. We need this!

Speakers also agreed that in order to make the transition to climate-smart agriculture happen, more needs to be done: to better assess the vulnerability of farmers, including smallholder farmers; to create policy environments that incentivize and reward climate smart practices; to connect smallholder farmers to seasonal climate predictions and trends through sms and other ICT solutions for short and long term planning; to support education and extensions services; to facilitate access to new technologies like drought resistant seeds; and, to mainstream CSA into agricultural and rural development policies, because in spite of new climate funds, that is where the bulk of the money will remain.

Perhaps the strongest point of consensus was that farmers are natural adapters. Climate change is happening too fast and creating too much unpredictability for them, though. So there is no time to waste in helping the poorest to adapt. In addition – let’s not forget that the majority of the best examples of adaptive systems are traditional practices that have been with us for centuries. Case in point is the oases of the Maghreb. In these systems, water is used efficiently and livestock needs are integrated into cropping systems, for example. Let’s not waste time or money to reinvent the wheel.

The Community Listeners’ Clubs in Niger and the Democratic Republic of Congo (16)

2011-10-07T10:58:00.000+02:00

Post by Christiane Monsieur (FAO)
Photos by Maartje Houbrechts (FAO)

Sorry for that: you missed a very interesting talk show this morning!

The chat show or talk show methodology was really appropriate for providing the audience with different angles on the issue that was being discussed and for sharing information and experiences in a non-conventional but attractive way. I must admit that we had great speakers today and this surely contributed to the success of the presentation: Eliane Najros, Coordinator of the FAO-Dimitra Project and Projet Manager in the Gender, Equity and Rural Employment Division (FAO); Ali Abdoulaye, Dimitra’s partner in the Sahel and Coordinator of the ONG-VIE Kande Nibayra and Yannick De Mol from the Dimitra Project in Dakar, Senegal.

Then, it does not happen every day to be able to share ideas with people who strongly believe in what they do and who understands the importance of using real-life examples to illustrate the results and impact of development activities. No theory here, only practice. In such a way, the participants in the session had the opportunity to learn about how the Community Listeners’ Clubs work in two African countries: the Democratic Republic of Congo, where some 8500 people (50% of women) in South-Kivu and Katanga have become members of these clubs and in Niger where there are currently over 8000 members (75% are women).

The clubs are true citizens’ groups (of men, of women or mixed) whose members share their concerns and needs and who discuss these within their own club and with other clubs, get access to information and, more importantly, take constructive action together. In this process, community radio is used as an information medium and a communication relay that facilitates setting up flows of information and communication. To listen to the radio programmes and to their own and others’ interventions, the clubs use solar-powered and wind-up radio sets, sometimes together with the solar mobile phones. Ali Abdoulaye showed the participants one of these incredible radio sets. Blue, resistant, sixty turns of the handle and you have one hour of radio listening!

The speakers explained how the Community Listeners’ Clubs have proved to be an effective way for isolated rural communities, women in particular, to become involved in their own development, gain self-confidence, change their pratices. In this empowering process of social mobisation, food security is one of the main objectives.

To learn more about the Listeners’ Clubs: http://www.fao.org/docrep/014/am604e/am604e.pdf (in English) and http://www.fao.org/docrep/014/am604f/am604f00.htm (in French)

Approaches for strengthening stakeholders abilities (23)

2011-10-06T10:00:00.000+02:00

Post by Andrea Rudiger (FAO) and Chiara Ferri (FAO)
Photos by Michela Baratelli (FAO) and Chiarra Ferri (FAO)

The FAO Research and Extension Branch has jointly presented three of its initiatives at the third day of the Global Share Fair under the title “Approaches for strengthening stakeholders’ abilities to generate, adapt and share experiences”.

1. Food Security through Commercialization of Agriculture (FSCA/PISA)

“What I hear, I forget. What I see I remember. What I do, I know.”

Participants from seven Western African countries, in which Food Security through Commercialization of Agriculture (FSCA/PISA) Projects are being implemented, met in Dakar in 2010. In a workshop participants learned ten new communication tools, such as SWOT analysis, open space, mind mapping, chat show and mapping of communication flows. They used them actively for knowledge exchange and learning from local solutions to challenges common to all FSCA/PISA initiatives. Even though the participants did not all share a common language, the interpretation as well as focussing on visual methods was very helpful in establishing exchange that continues beyond the workshop.

2. Applied Technologies and Practices for Small Agricultural Producers (TECA)

Using the example of a sweet potato disease outbreak in Eastern Uganda, the aims and functions FAO’s online platform for applied technologies and practices (TECA) were illustrated. Partners of TECA such as NARO (National Agricultural Research Organisation in Uganda), the International Potato Center (CIP) and DIFID have shared sweet potato technologies on TECAs online knowledge base. The manager of a local NGO, who has direct contact with local farmers, used TECA’s Exchange Group to alert other stakeholders to the problem and was put in touch with a CIP researcher. TECA enabled this NGO to respond more effectively to the problem on the ground.

3. Rural and Agricultural Development and Communication Network in Egypt (RADCON)

RADCON addresses the communication gap between research centres, extension services, the ministry of agriculture, the private sector and above all small farming communities with a special focus on women and youth. The network facilitates the sharing of knowledge among all stakeholders. At the core of the network are the RADCON centres, to which individual farmers can go to ask specific questions concerning their farming practices. These centres are linked to five so called expert systems (on rice, tomatoes, wheat, grapes and beans), to which village facilitators send the inquiries and receive feedback from specialists. Similar projects are being implemented for example in Bhutan, Uganda and Armenia as part of the Virtual Extension and Research Communication Network (VERCON).

All of these initiatives face challenges, which were discussed in some detail in the session.

To make these communication tools and systems work, building capacities for technology and empowering local actors is often necessary. In some cases this means to train basic computer skills (as in the case of VERCON Bhutan). In other cases a face-to-face interaction of an online community might be necessary, thus realising the human component of technology adoption.

Another challenge is to build sustainable solutions, which will endure when the external resources are no longer available. All three initiatives require commitment of human and financial resources by the partners, particularly governments. In the case of TECA the team at FAO can support partners (like research institutes or development agencies) by providing the software for a decentralised platform, but they will have to commit resources to its adaptation to their needs and its maintenance.

Build competitive business relationships between smallholder supplier groups and agribusinesses (7)

2011-10-05T17:32:00.006+02:00

Post by Siobhan Kelly (FAO) and Denise Senmartin
Photos by Denise Senmartin.

The World Cafe session shared experiences from three cases pilot tested under FAO’s business model approach. Discussions at the coffee tables focussed on challenges that each of the pilot cases have been confronted with during implementation and as a result some strategic activities and ideas have been proposed that can be adopted during the last months of the projects. Some ideas proposed have been:

THE CASE OF RICE IN MALI

Should FAO encourage the Federation to get a new loan to be able to increase volume?

An upcoming feasibility study needs to focus on understanding if significant improvement in quality can make the business model profitable.

THE CASE OF CASSAVA IN ZAMBIA
To promote and strengthen the competitiveness of the industrial sector, should FAO and other projects work with commercial farmers in order to satisfy the procurement needs of the industrial buyers?

Engagement with commercial farmers should be accompanied by strengthen of district farmer associations in agribusiness skills and contract management to ensure equitable bargaining power.

THE CASE OF PISTACHIO IN IRAN
How can trust and collaboration be stimulated within a supply chain to improve overall competitiveness and introduce win-win solutions for all chain players?

Sharing technology and know-how which stimulates linkages vertically and horizontally in the chain.
Implementing rigorous quality control to improve buyers trust in the chain.

The World Café methodology allowed for a dynamic exchange for every participant to express their ideas. The word from some of the them?

“I enjoyed the approach of the World Café. Working for a NGO, I am interested in learning and capturing FAO´s experience as they can reach the policy levels. There is still work to do and the discussion, for example in the Cassava project, can help.” And then, at the stairs “It was my first session like this, I´m an intern at IFAD, so had not much ideas to provide yet but learnt a lot!”

Thanks for the meaningful, inspiring and energetic conversations, even though we forgot the candy!

Knowledge sharing to develop effective national forest policy through participatory processes (64)

2011-10-05T13:56:00.000+02:00

Post by Nadejda Loumbeva (FAO)

Fred Kafeero, Forestry Officer, Participatory Forestry at FAO and Marguerite France-Lanord, Forestry Officer, National Forest Programme Facility hosted by FAO, discussed the role of knowledge management and knowledge sharing in developing and implementing national forest policy. The format of the session was a chat show followed by questions from the audience.

In particular, Marguerite explained that since 2002 the National Forest Programme Facility (the Facility) has worked with more than 80 countries throughout the world to build capacity for and support the participation of all stakeholder groups in forestry policy development and implementation. In this, the Facility has worked in close partnership with the FAO Forest Economics, Policy and Product Division (FOE). In particular, small grants have been delivered mainly to civil society in the Facility member countries to conduct pilot studies, develop information systems, and raise awareness about community forestry. Such initiatives have resulted in participatory policy development and implementation processes put into place.

To build on this, Fred explained that FOE has provided public sector officials and other stakeholders working in participatory forestry management with national and regional trainings in participatory approaches and conflict resolution methodologies. Examples of methodologies and tools taught at these trainings include: stakeholder analysis, priority analysis, opportunities and threats (SWOT) analysis, fish bowl debates. The purpose of these trainings has been to empower public sector officials and other stakeholders with practical skills in developing forestry policies. Each training has stressed the importance of involving all key stakeholder groups, including grassroots communities, and in this way enabling all-inclusive and sustainable forest management.

A question/comment came up during the discussion on the partnership between the Facility and FOE. How did it work?
Marguerite and Fred explained there has been close and committed collaboration between the two, particularly with respect to providing participatory approaches and methodology trainings. For example, often a grant provided by the Facility to one of its member countries would be used in part by the FOE in order to organize and deliver such trainings. In addition, the FOE would often act as a coach to Facility member countries, helping them to absorb and enact the philosophy of participatory forestry management. This way countries are more able to effectively tap into the assistance being provided by the Facility and build capacity for the long term.

In addition, the Facility and FOE conceptualize technical support areas together, for example:

in supporting the development of National Forest financing strategies;
in developing guidelines with countries, i.e. guidelines on integration of climate change measures into national forest programmes;
in supporting community based forest enterprises.

What a great example of teamwork and collaboration in action!

5 years sharing coffee and knowledge: the Bluebar experience (26)

2011-10-03T17:54:00.003+02:00

Post by Tina Farmer (FAO), Pictures by Luca Servo (FAO)

1. Background of Bluebar

Began 5 years ago by Luca and Tina as part of an online facilitation course
The result of realizing that ‘essential’ information regarding FAO activities of all sorts was sought after but not easily found; in fact, a lot of valuable information is caught through informal chatting over coffee – hence, the birth of the Bluebar (an actual FAO coffee bar)
Grew from a small group – basically a loose invitation to participants of that online facilitation course – to over 100 members today
Formed as an informal network of communicators with no structure or hierarchy
Online presence through Dgroups list with occasional face-to-face coffees at the FAO Bluebar
Focuses on practical information and issues

2. Success of Bluebar

Brings like-minded people together
Informal, no hierarchy
Membership is voluntary
Organic, ‘under the radar’
Good place to meet others across the organization (and in other Rome-based agencies)
Great place for recommendations, advice, tips, as a sounding board
Fosters level of trust among members
A ‘comfort zone’
Bridges an institutional information gap
Not for self-promoters
Co-shared facilitation helps orient meetings and contact
Mutually supportive membership

3. Discussion on the Bluebar and future considerations

Ever thought of measuring the potential ripple effect, to see what is the ‘impact’?

Measuring impact of the Bluebar could be an interesting exercise, but isn’t essential

Ever thought of advertising?

Advertising could kill the nature of the Bluebar – it’s strength is that it is organic with a self-selecting and motivated membership

Ever thought of distributing short summaries of the face-to-face Bluebar gatherings?

Summaries would be a good idea for those unable to attend the coffee meetings

Could the ‘model’ work in a smaller environment?

The Bluebar could undoubtedly be replicated in another environment if all the similar ingredients are present, especially the need for it and good will to have it

Could FAO field staff participate? If so, how?

All interested people can participate, including FAO field staff – members can invite others

4. Wrap-up

The Bluebar is its own niche and, for the time being, responds to certain needs
Tina/Luca will initiate ‘Bluebar Notes’ to summarize face-to-face meetings
Nora will keep us posted if she starts a similar group at Bioversity

Nexus between rural employment and food security (65)

2011-10-03T12:00:00.001+02:00

Post and photos by Cristina Sette (CGIAR)

FAO is working on an integrated country approach for rural employment and decent work in Malawi and Tanzania aiming to support national capacities in mainstreaming rural employment and decent work; child labour prevention; and youth employment creation. The three-year programme is funded by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) and supports the Millennium Development Goal 1 on ‘Eradicate Extreme Poverty and Hunger’, under the new target (1B) to achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all, including women and young people.

Peter Wobst, from FAO, presented the main aspects of the approach, its background, the rationale and its activities, such as child labour prevention in agriculture and junior farmer field and life schools (JFFLS). Peter shared with us the lessons he and his team have learned since the programme started:

Involvement of stakeholders such as national and local government, UN agencies, those active in the area (NGOs), and local communities is crucial for understanding all the issues involved in rural employment.
Using an integrated approach that better reflect issues on child labour and linking it with other areas of food security, collecting ideas beyond employment.
Paying attention to context and population groups to have tailored approaches (the reality of employment in fishing communities is different from crop farmers)
Influencing the formulation of policy and strategies at national and UN level.
Working through capacity development but need next steps

Peter’s team faces several challenges and wanted to discuss with participants of the session three main challenges: institutionalization of such an approach, ways for sustainability and linkages with existing investments in agriculture.

One participant suggested to avoid the word institutionalization as it can be associated with bureaucracy. And to look at this intervention as a complex systems with multiple dimensions. On the sustainability, working with policy makers on the values of the project, on creation of employment and reducing poverty, can be a way to move towards sustainability, where National governments take the responsibility for carrying on the programme in a near future. Just having policies is not enough, but helping governments to see the importance of such policies and the benefits of applying such policies can bring is the way forward.

Child labour is a sensitive issue but when discussing with national partners, the team linked it with poverty reduction and employment generation.

More information can be found at www.fao-ilo.org.

Role of Social Media in Development (206)

2011-10-03T11:20:00.004+02:00

Post and photos by Lisa Cespedes (FAO)

During this session, Musa Masilela, Acting Water Manager at SWADE (Swaziland Water and Agricultural Development Enterprise) shared some lessons learned from a Share-Fair event of the Lower Usuthu Smallholder Irrigation Project (LUSIP), "Linking Farmers with service providers and markets – a social media analysis for rural development in Africa, Swaziland".
Musa shared the following key lessons from the LUSIP event:

Use of social media is a growing opportunity among their project's participants, inspired by the prevalence of mobile phones.
Social media shifts the paradigm from being event oriented to continuous sharing of information e.g. people shared more information post the event than during the event.
Limitations include rural adults’ partial ignorance and fear of the social media as It can potentially leak confidential information to the public.

Soon after, the lively session and active participants started to brainstorm and share their experiences on the question posed by Musa:
What social media tools have you used for development projects? How?

Among the many experiences shared, some of the key points summarized by the participants included:

CHALLENGES

Lack of resources (time and people) is a problem in maintaining social media accounts for organizations
Some organizations are 'conservative' and people don't have the freedom to use social media. For example, blogs need to pass several layers to be approved.
In reference to the problem of control: organizations need to define a social media policy/guidelines that works while leaving enough space for inspiration
Not only one person should be the 'custodian' of your organization's social media channels.
Organizations assume that social media is all about the "communication people", it is not!
There isn't a complete understanding of the POTENTIAL of #social media in organizations

OPPORTUNITIES

Social media offers access to instant feedback from members and people in different regions. "There are 2 million Facebook users in Kenya. If we have a question that we cannot answer, we ask the audience and we get replies!"
We need to choose the tools that work for our own organizations, otherwise, we lose sense of direction
Social Media tools change very quickly - but still people use these tools for social purpose, not quite yet for work
It is necessary to find a balance between individual exploration and corporate requirements.
A diverse group of people using social media tools provides various points of view, showing the totality of your organization

Towards the end of the session, the participants were taking bets!
Some food for thought included:
Will Facebook survive the next 5 years?
Will Google+ survive in 18 months? There was a general consensus that it will not, what do you think?!! Let's continue the discussion here!

Mobile agri-business in Congo (133) - matchmaking challenges and promises

2011-10-02T09:55:00.003+02:00

On Tuesday 27 September, Narcisse Mbunzama Lokwa
exposed his mobile agro-business enterprise. Mobile phones – and particularly short messenging services (SMS) - offer opportunities for farmers to develop their capacities, share information about their products and connect with markets in real time. This helps them increase their knowledge about the possibilities to sell their products, increase their productivity and their revenues. The overall objective is to develop food security and better health of the poor in rural Congo and other areas.

The 8 participants to the session questioned the business model of Narcisse, who pays for the service (the connecting service is free except for farmers that wish to sell their products in that way), the connectivity of farmers (who do have access to mobile phones in the areas where Narcisse is working) and the potential to scale it up to other, perhaps more deprived, areas (which seems to be a challenge at this stage). One of the participants suggested introducing positive competition among farmers by increasing the transparency of their offers, to stimulate better productivity and a more effective matchmaking.

The session was short but showed there is potential to expand this kind of mechanisms and to connect with similar initiatives in the region (Congo-Brazza, Cameroon etc.).

Ethiopian Livestock Market Information System: Using ICT to deliver information to rural communities (1)

2011-09-30T16:17:00.000+02:00

Post and Photos by Lisa Cespedes (FAO)

Today, during the Second Global AgriKnowledge Share Fair taking place at IFAD, Sintayehu Alemayehu, from Ethiopia, gave a presentation on the Ethiopian Livestock Market Information System, developed in 2005 by the Global Livestock Collaborative Research Support Program (GL-CRSP), being implemented by the Texas A&M University and funded by USAID.

The system delivers early warnings on livestock market information; this information is delivered in nearly real time to rural communities, pastoralists/livestock producers and traders in Ethiopia, not only in English, but also in Ahmaric language.This data is delivered by request, through Community Information Centers (CIC), via SMS, emails, radio, television, and the internet.

Sintayehu gave a lively demo on the application's contents, which can be accessed here: http://www.lmiset.net

"The livelihood of a vast majority of people in East Africa is highly dependent on income from livestock and livestock products. Therefore, the development of reliable and timely livestock market information is vital for the development of the countries in the region and provides a basis for livestock producers and traders to make informed marketing decisions"

The Ethiopian Livestock Market Information System collects, analyzes, storages and disseminates livestock prices and volume market information. It provides complete price and volume data based on animal type, breed, age class, gender and grade at low cost. Finally, it integrates market information with livestock early warning system and expandable system to other commodities.
During today's session, experiences, lessons and challenges were discussed, in reference to the institutionalization of livestock market information and livestock early warning system into governments' market information and early warning system.
Some of the key achievements of the Ethiopian Livestock Market Information System are:

Speedy server deployed at Ministry’s headquarter
LMIS web portal/gateway for Ethiopia is currently hosted by MOARD
A steady flow of timely, regular and reliable livestock market information
Ministry personnel are successfully processing price and sales volume data from the database and disseminating market information
LMIS used as benchmark to begin AMIS for crops in the country
Banks, private traders and government using the data

For additional information visit: http://www.lmiset.net

What does it take to make a Share Fair happen? Don’t ask ‘what’, ask ‘who’!

2011-09-30T14:57:00.002+02:00

Post by Johannes Schunter (UNDP)

When walking through the IFAD corridors this warm Italian September week one cannot help but be amazed by the buzzing, vibrant energy that is felt in every part of the building. People chat in corners, engage in up to 15 parallel group sessions, share their thoughts with someone with a video camera or sit in the hallway with their laptop on their lap, communicating one of their many impressions through email, Twitter or a blog. Over 600 participants, 160 projects, 200+ scheduled group or plenary sessions, and one is left with an immediate question: How on earth did they pull this off? After all, there is no professional event management company involved here that pulls the strings. This event is done by the sponsoring organizations themselves, with a surprisingly low budget and mostly with staff who – if they are not helping plan and implement knowledge fairs – have other jobs to do.
I talked to some of the organizers to get a small glimpse of the machinery that made this event happen behind the scenes.

Planning for this ShareFair started already in January 2011, with a one-day facilitated brainstorming workshop where the Rome-based stakeholders ( Bioversity International, CGIAR ICT-KM programme, FAO, IFAD and WFP) got together to determine the general direction and approach they wanted to take with this event, building on the first event that took place at FAO in 2009. After that a Steering Committee was established in February to plan the event.

As there is no general existing budget for Rome ShareFairs, the team members from the different host organizations had to raise funds for the significant logistical and programmatic requirements (which include necessities such as security, ambulance, infrastructure and communication expenses) as well as to fund travel expenses for proposals from participants who otherwise could not come to the fair and share their learnings. Yet, I was surprised to learn that this entire event is realized with notably less than $200,000 (actual and in-kind) accumulated resources overall.
Talking about proposals: roughly 300 proposals were submitted after the Steering Committee publicly announced the ShareFair through their website http://www.sharefair.net in May 2011. The submissions were reviewed and filtered down to about 160, the maximum capacity of content sessions that the IFAD building can accommodate during the three main days of the fair with up to 15 parallel sessions at a given time slot.

These sessions, however, are rarely self runners. If the thematic expert is not by chance also a communication professional, a facilitator is needed to help the presenter avoiding tiring PowerPoint slides and instead turn the presentation into an engaging, participatory learning session using knowledge sharing (http://www.kstoolkit.org/KS+Methods) approaches. But where to get those versed facilitators from? Luckily, Knowledge Management staff in Rome are well connected with the Knowledge Management for Development Network (KM4Dev), a community of KM practitioners working in development. Additionally, a call was placed also within each of the participating organizations for facilitators. By calling on about 50+ volunteer facilitators, the ShareFair organizers were able to provide professional facilitation for almost all project presentations, drawing on a range of creative and participatory facilitation methodologies which were introduced in a pre-conference training day for participants interested in these tools.

The training sessions of this so-called “Training and Learning Day” included not only facilitation techniques, but also introductory sessions into a range of social media tools for knowledge exchange and communication, such as Twitter, Facebook, Photos, Blogs or Podcasts. That those sessions were not just theoretical exercises was demonstrated during the entire week by the social reporting team, a group of about 30+ social media enthusiasts who committed to report live from event sessions and interactions in between sessions through the full range of social media tools. This way, the immediate audience of a few hundred on-site participants could be extended to many thousands of interested practitioners that followed the event online, by reading blogs, viewing video interviews or responding to tweets posted during the event.

Finally, as a participant of the Fair, besides noticing some of the more visible faces of the fair that give announcements and introduce sessions, you will most likely run into one of the many volunteers who are supporting the logistics behind the scene at any given moment: as registration desk volunteers, as information focal points and helpful guides on each floor, behind the technology that provides meeting room infrastructure, WLAN access and live webcast, or as runners who help fixing the many little and bigger emergencies that we mostly don’t even notice as participants.
So again, what does it take to make such a ShareFair happen? It takes all those people, seen and unseen, and I think they deserve a collective tipping of hats for the astounding work they do. Or you just walk up to the next one you see and give that person a ‘thank you’. And if you bring them a cup of coffee they might even reward you with more interesting details on life behind the scenes of the ShareFair!

Growing local farmers: De-rooting poverty (194)

2011-09-29T15:34:00.002+02:00

The Topic: An agricultural enterprise uses some of its excess capacity to provide support to smallholders in Ethiopia
The Owner: Amare Abebaw Woreta (Frag Agro Industry)
The facilitator/blogger: Riff Fullan (HELVETAS Swiss Intercooperation)

The session: Amare told the story of how he - after graduating from school - established a small agricultural enterprise which became profitable after some time. But Amare noticed that the vast majority of farmers in the Amhara region where he was located were not improving their lives, they were only just getting by. They only had around 1/2 hectare of land per family and mostly relied on rain-fed agriculture. Amare's company decided to invite farmers to see what the company was doing and - for those who were interested - take up interest-free loans (based on a group of farmers, so the group would collectively have responsibility for repayment) to buy inputs and take up some of the company's practice of focusing on more profitable crops. The company also helped 'graduates' of its demonstration activities to form cooperatives and worked to ensure the coops had access to market information and could take advantage of the best prices. Half of the target group were female-headed households, half male-headed.

Following Amare's story, we decided to have a short Q&A followed by a loosely structured peer assist. The idea was to have a conversation triggered initially by immediate questions and observations from participants in the group, then to move on to a couple of key questions from Amare's side for which he was seeking input.

What did participants have to say? One of the first questions was why Amare did not charge interest on the loans. How could it be sustainable? Amare responded that it was a trust issue: farmers were used to seeing microfinance institutions providing loans - often at high interest rates - that also required collateral (e.g. a goat, a cow), which represented a huge risk for the farmers. Amare wanted to invite interested farmers to take part in the innovative behaviour based on their experiences of seeing how things were done on the company farm, and without having the risk overhead.

Still, there was a feeling that the company could charge a small amount of interest in order to support the continuing program of farmer training, especially after its initial success with several groups of farmers over several years (totalling around 70 farmers so far). What else? Maybe forming a marketing company that could help farmers and coops link up more effectively to markets. Other ideas around sustainability included:

the notion that support for the whole value chain needed to be considered (finance, marketing, information, logistics, etc), and that part of the sustainability equation was capacity building of these new coops (where most members might be illiterate and/or have little education or experience along the value chain);
another is that farmers needed to have a sense of ownership for such coops to thrive. In this context, the voluntary and low-risk nature of the venture really helps;
a third is the possibility to mobilize educated youth who could help with some aspects of running/organising activities and thereby generate a bit of income for themselves while filling some of the skills gaps the farmers have;
in terms of changing production processes, the idea was raised that processing of agricultural outputs (e.g. mangoes into mango juice) and selling a higher value-added product could help on the sustainability front.

The final two threads that were briefly covered in our group peer assist/conversation, included the potential for additional activities to be boosted, given that the normal agricultural season runs from roughly April-Oct, so there is usually some time when farmers are not so busy, especially if they depend on the rains. Second was the whole challenge of climate change......most farmers have heard little or nothing about it, and anyway look at the vagaries of the weather as God's will rather than being tied to climate change. How can dialogues be undertaken that respect different world views yet still promote active adaptation? One idea was raised that had been mentioned in another sharefair session, the 'theatre of the oppressed' a methodology made famous by Brazilian Augusto Boal in the 60s and influenced by the 'pedagogy of the oppressed' methodology of his countryman, the educator Paulo Freire.

In a nutshell, both approaches work to engage community members in describing/perceiving and transforming the contexts in which they live. They aspire to a high level of ownership and definition of the problematique and approaches to overcoming key challenges by those whose lives are most directly affected. This could be a way for the farmers in this Ethiopian case to incorporate climate change issues and solutions into their own worldviews and ways of living.

All-in-all, a very interesting and wide-ranging conversation. I know Amare will go home with lots of ideas to try out!

Scaling-up rural innovations: lessons from the learning route (244)

2011-09-29T12:12:00.000+02:00

Post by Andrea Rudiger (FAO)

In this session a new training method waspresented: the learning route!

In a video of a learning route onmicrofinance and gender in Uganda illustrated this method figuratively, whichwas called by participants “a mobile rural university”. (You find the video onthe homepage of PROCASURs website http://www.procasur.org/).

Participants of a learning route do notlook at endless power point presentations, but go on an actual trip together.This trip takes them from one successful and innovative project in the thematicarea of the route to the next. In the case of Uganda, they visited a project inBukonso, where illiterate women develop a vision of what they want to achieveduring the next five years by drawing ‘vision posters’. The trip continues toanother part of Uganda, where women self-select into groups and thus use theirsocial capital and trust as an asset for successful small business projects andto access financing.

Participants range from politicians andentrepreneurs to NGO workers and IFAD staff. PROCASUR must often make thedifficult choice of selecting roughly 15 participants out of hundreds ofapplicants from all over the world for a route. Some of them areself-sponsored, as for example a Chinese government official who joined theroute in Uganda. Others are sponsored by IFAD/PROCASUR. Before starting thetrip to carefully selected projects, usually in one country, participants arerequired to prepare thoroughly, by developing a concrete question, which theyaim to answer through the trip and by reading up on the projects.

The end product is the so called innovationplan, which goes through five phases of drafting and revision before, duringand after the actual route. This plan outlines which new technologies andpractices the participant aims to use in his or her context and how they areadapted to the situation on the ground. In the end, all plans are submitted fora competition and the best plan will be supported with an amount ranging from€3,000 to €10,000.

There is a growing demand for learningroutes all over the world (the latest one was just completed in Seville, Spain)and on a range of topics (e.g. extractive industries). This way technologiestravel from one continent to the other. For example, participants from Ecuadorfrom a microfinance bank went on a learning route to Malawi, where they learnthow mobiles are used for banking in the country. This technology is now beingsuccessfully applied in Ecuador and the revenue of the company rose by $600,000as a result.

Those who developed this new trainingmethod envision it both as a way to make themselves unnecessary as soon aspossible and to up-scale applied technologies which work successfully on alocal level. One impressive example of what policy dialogue and up-scaling canlook like comes from the Peru route. Participants from Vietnam went back totheir country and within a period of months a law was passed which stated thatfinancial allocations should be done only by competition.

Learning routes use local knowledge andempower practitioners. They seem to offer many advantages over traditionaltraining methods, but they face one major challenge: they are very cost-intensive.

Giving a voice to young professionals through agricultural on-line events (30)

2011-09-29T07:14:00.000+02:00

Post by Marina Cherbonnier (YPARD)

I was rather delighted to head to my session with, fresh in mind, one of the last advices from the « Communities of Practice clinic» that I was just leaving:

« First of all, launch informal discussions with people you envisage as beneficiaries of your community of practice and simply ask them what they want and need! »

I was going towards the good direction!

Presenting YPARD’s agricultural online events for giving a voice to our Young Professionals’ community… that’s what it was about…

but it was even more about launching an interactive discussion, with the people attending the session, on how to get more youth involved in (YPARD) online events*.

Let me jump into the conclusions:

Strengthen your social media strategy, your partnerships and your promotion
This was the conclusion of a previous discussion on the same topic in a previous share fair. How concretely apply this?

Express and promote what Young Professionals (can) gain from participating to YPARD online events**. Give concrete examples of the advantages that some previous participants got from it. Brand it as « success stories ».
Address challenges such as shyness to contribute, lack of confidence of young professionals (« My opinion is not relevant »), cultural tradition of the youth to keep silent as a respect to older people. How to Answer this? Show to the youth that you (community manager or whatever is your name), you are here for them as a supporter, an advisor and ready to help and assist them technically such as on the content itself.
Link YPARD representatives in the different regions and countries to the rest of the community more, so that the WHOLE community feels engaged in the movement. YPARD members are not simple followers but have each a role to play! Do you hear the key word “ownership” resonating loudly here? ( -note : YPARD is a worldwilde and decentralized movement -)
Use local and national newspapers, media and organisations to promote the online events as much as it can be!

Solicit content / subjects of interest

Encourage young professionals or supporters of youth’s cause to talk about local projects or local strategic decisions. Why ? I guess I don’t need to recall how much this is valuable as “food for thoughts”. Let me rather highlight that:

People like to learn about on-the-ground experience by individuals; people like to be told stories in which they can possibly identify themselves or recognize some elements from their own experience.
We only require young professionals to talk about their own experience in the simplest way they can… There shouldn’t be any fear of being « wrong » in telling their story. What do they know more than their daily life and reality?
Make sure that the individuals’ testimonies are combined to a person’s profile and a picture. It makes the thing much more personal and friendly!

Get conversations' key leaders for moderating the e-discussions. It enables to orient discussions into deeper considerations. These leaders could possibly be some specialists and recognized people. This gives more credibility to the discussions.

Provide attractive types of events
Blogs and discussions are most appreciated if there is a way for the contributor to see the number of views, to have his/her post “liked” and shared, to receive comments.

Pictures and videos attract more people, particularly the ones who are not sensitized to agriculture. It is indeed livelier, more fun and it humanizes concepts, projects, policies and evaluations.
The idea of developing contests has been emphasized as very appealing for young professionals. Being in competition and winning a price gets the things exciting. Why not get the opportunity to attend a conference or a forum and represent the movement created online on specific topics?
Video contests while they could seem quite time consuming for participants could be proposed in a way that only short interviews, snapshots of Young Professionals, series of few pictures are required.
E-conferences are much appreciated. Being able to follow a session through streaming while carrying on with some task in the office is seen as very convenient. Being able to contribute through social media on live is also very engaging.

Should we create a “free zone” on YPARD Website for Young Professionals to express themselves simply the way they want it, with text, pictures, videos, SONGS, drawings etc etc?… I am starting imagining a fresco similar to Nancy White’s drawings… A big one, where the whole community would have putted its pieces… There would be some sound as background and animated shots embedded… It looks good from here… Let’s push the thoughts and actions further…

It was a small session but with high and thoughtful participation! I thank once again the participants! Others, your comments are most welcome!

* Online events can be series of blogs, e-discussions, e-consultations, e-conferences, pictures galleries/exhibitions, video contests… songs contests, drawing exhibition etc etc…

** Benefits from contributing to YPARD online events: Learn from others and get inspired from their experience, create a strong network with your peers, “experienced professionals” and partners organisations, gain visibility, gain credibility and get a voice as an individual and as a community of youth; have your say on strategic and political level; get YPARD be the echo of your issues in strategic debates and furthermore get strategic decisions be in phase with what impact you!

Contact: Marina Cherbonnier, YPARD (Young Professionals’ Platform for Agricultural Research for Development)Marina.cherbonnier@ypard.net

Investing in Young People is the Key for Agricultural Development (38)

2011-09-28T22:56:00.000+02:00

Post and photos by Massimiliano Terzini (FAO)

“The future of agriculture is in the hands of young people”. It seems like the words of Director-General of Bioversity International, Emile Frison, during Tuesday’s inaugural session of the Share Fair 2011, have not been spoken in vain.

Indeed, during the session on “Partnership with young farmers to promote collective action and entrepreneurship development” the focus was on young people as the key for agriculture development. The main topics were: knowledge sharing, access to agriculture skills and promotion of collective action.

During the first part of the session Sintandji Charlemagne presented the Songhai project, which committed to training programs for young people to build and develop their human and technical skills in the agricultural field. Songhai is helping them overcome barriers, like access to market, by creating a network of young farmers in Africa to provide them with their own space to succeed in agriculture. Training is not enough, though; Songhai is also directly engaging with young people to give them a better imagine of agriculture, presenting it as a chance for a successful career.

The second part of the session was dedicated to the project presented to IFAD by the Movement for Catholic Agricultural and Rural Youth (MIJARC). George Fernandez, president of MIJARC, spoke passionately about the importance of agriculture, as the key for development and how it is crucial to invest in young people and help them emerging in the agribusiness with pragmatic and feasible projects. MIJARC is engaging in a programme to reflect on how to facilitate access of rural youth to farming activities. The objective is to identify the needs and concerns of young people involved in agriculture all over the world, taking them at the core of development projects and thus facilitating youth access to agriculture activities. The results of this initiative are contributing to the formulation of successful measures and policies, meeting young rural people specific needs. Moreover young farmers and their organizations will gain space for dialogue and will be able to strengthen partnerships with the major actors of the agricultural sector.

What came out from this session is the widespread belief of the importance of linking knowledge sharing to collective action, and youth really need to be organized in formalized structure in order to have a chance to succeed. Songhai Centre and MIJARC are going towards the right direction.

Find out more http://www.songhai.org/english/ http://www.mijarc.org/

Weather index insurance: Building smallholder producers resilience, and experience in China (76)

2011-09-28T22:25:00.000+02:00

Post by Emily Coleman

Through two photos, Weijing Wang - Country Programme Officer for China, illustrated two important reasons why weather index-based insurance is being used as a viable alternative to traditional multi-peril crop insurance in China. The insurance agent in the field, who after every perceived yield loss, has to travel 24-7 to visit every smallholder farm and assess the actual damage caused. The farmer looking at his crops, who faces the dilemma of whether or not to invest extra money to improve production, for fear of losing his investment and more if bad weather strikes.

Weather index-insurance eliminates these two risks. It responds to an objective parameter, such as rainfall or temperature, at a defined weather station during an agreed period of time. The parameters of the insurance contract are set to correlate as closely as possible with the damages suffered by the farmer.

The insurance agent from the photo we saw doesn’t have to go around to each farm and assess the loss, as all farmers within a defined area receive pay-outs based on the same contract and measurement at the same station. This can reduce the transaction costs for the insurers and importantly the time it takes for the farmer to be compensated for their loss.

The Weather Risk Management Facility – a joint initiative of IFAD and WFP - carried out the first weather index-based insurance pilot in China from 2008 to 2010. A large element of this pilot was building the technical capacities of the local stakeholders in weather index-based insurance, particularly Guoyuan Insurance Company who learnt how to calculate indexes and design contracts for this new product.
A follow-up pilot was initiated by the Chinese government and Guoyuan Insurance Company. This time, building on what they had learnt from IFAD and WFP, they greatly expanded coverage – both in terms of number of people insured, and the geographical area.

During 2011, there was low temperature and drought, enough to trigger a payout. The payout was fast, and whilst farmers could tap into this amount to recover their production, they were still waiting for the compensation from the additional multi-peril crop insurance which relies on in-field assessments.
Responding to questions from the floor, Weijing explained that since that very first IFAD-WFP pilot, interest in weather index-based insurance in the country is growing. The government, insurance companies, and other donors are all seeing a future in weather index-based insurance for China. Most importantly, farmers are beginning to change their attitude too. They are now beginning to trust in this type of financial product more than we saw in the initial pilot, and interestingly, they are becoming more aware of the weather risk facing them and seeking out new online information channels on how to manage it.

Whilst not every area, country, or weather pattern may be suited to weather index-based insurance, the benefits are already evident in China, and the future looks sunny!

For more information: http://www.ifad.org/ruralfinance/wrmf/

Innovative Partnerships and Multistakeholder Approaches Promoted in the RAS Context (229)

2011-09-28T22:17:00.000+02:00

Post and photos by Marylaure Crettaz (SDC) and Nara Weigel (Helvetas)

The 'river of life' drawing above was completed by the green cards in the course of the session and served as a storyline for the thematic input by Marylaure Crettaz (Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation) and Nara Weigel (HELVETAS Swiss Intercooperation). The story started in the mountains with a personal reflection of Marylaure and continued with a brief introduction of SDC's interest in Rural Advisory Services (RAS) most recently expressed through providing support to the GFRAS (Global Forum on Rural Advisory Services). SDC's reorganisation including the creation of thematic networks - one of them being the Agriculture + Rural development network open to SDC staff and its partners - was illustrated as a bend in the river! The network has been capitalizing RAS experiences. This led to the presentation of two initiatives one at project level in Bangladesh and the other at a global level - where public private partnerships were at the core. See below for an illustration of the key actors involved.

The presentation served as a basis to subsequent discussions in a world cafe format on (1) the added value of public private partnerships - at project and global levels for the farmers and (2) whether private sector involvement at both levels leads to more sustainability. Participants agreed that the success of public private partnerships depends very much on the context. Nevertheless, most participants feel that private sector involvement can lead to new market opportunities for farmers as well as more efficient and relevant services, e.g. through facilitating a better flow of information. Under certain conditions (i.e. social inclusion) this can lead to improved livelihood opportunities. It was also highlighted that the role of the public sector remains crucial regarding quality control and setting enabling environments and policies. Finally, participants pointed out that civil society is an important actor, e.g. farmers as drivers of change and NGOs as facilitators. Nothing new under the sun of Rome. ;-)

Innovative ways of collecting and sharing food security data in East and Central Africa (31)

2011-09-28T21:42:00.002+02:00

Post by Elena Di Paola (FAO)

On the 27th of September, in his session on “Innovative ways of collecting and sharing food security data in East and Central Africa”, Phillip Fong (FAO) who is based in Nairobi, told us about the success of digital pen and mobile data collection technology.

Field workers in Central and East Africa often face a difficult problem: Sending the data they collect about animal health to government specialists in a timely way to prevent epidemics. Unfortunately, the lack of high tech tools and poor computer literacy delayed the delivery of information by months.

One solution developed was an apparently simple solution: Pen and paper. Not the usual ones, though. A digital pen and paper technology that collect data as the workers write it down on special paper forms, and then send it through the mobile network to a central database. Each person in charge of gathering the information is given a set of paper forms to record the animal health data, a pen that contains a digital camera and a microprocessor, and a mobile phone. When the user writes on the form, the camera records the marks made by the pen. After completing the survey, the user ticks the “send box” inducing the pen to make a Bluetooth connection to the mobile phone, which then transmits the data to the server.

The outcome of the data received in database format is analyzed and validated by professional veterinarians. This simplifies the compilation of statistics and facilitates prompt intervention in case a possible epidemic is suspected.This technology is cost efficient when applied to large volumes.

“Simply amazing”, “I am extremely surprised”, “Wow, never heard of it” were some of the comments from the participants in the session on this project that is changing lives.

Highlights from Marc Davies' keynote on 'Demystifying Private-Public Partnerships'

2011-09-28T11:44:00.000+02:00

TheWaterChannel on the ground (121)

2011-09-28T10:50:00.000+02:00

Post by Lenneke Knoop

On Monday, several of you were asked the following question: "what does a water buffer mean to you?" These videos were shown in Tuesdays’ session of TheWaterChannel: “TheWaterChannel on the Ground”. As it was a no-PowerPoint zone, you can get a feeling of what happened in the session by watching the Prezi, which is an alternative way of presenting. There was an interesting discussion on the importance of getting the knowledge to the right persons. Mr Nii Quaye-Kumah from the embassy of Ghana explained that materials as the DVD box Water Management in Motion should be distributed to the practitioners at the 170 districts in Ghana.

In the second part of the session a new publication was launched: Transforming Landscapes Transforming Lives, the business of sustainable water buffer management in which QR codes link to videos on TheWaterChannel. For more info and personal explanation on this book and TheWaterChannel, please visit the table outside the IFAD building close to the chill out corner!

More info: www.thewaterchannel.tv & www.bebuffered.com