Entries from May 2008

Scaling up adoption of improved tree-based options

May 29, 2008 · 2 Comments

The other day a colleague asked me to give a talk on “communication planning” for the benefit of his colleagues in a tree nursery project. I wasn’t too familiar with their project so I asked some key questions about it, such as:

  • What are the goals of the project?
  • What is the role of communication in the project?
  • How will communication be used to help achieve project goals?
  • Who are the stakeholders?
  • What prior work has been done to understand the stakeholders?

To facilitate wide-scale adoption and achieve impact, an R&D project needs to address the following points before a communication strategy can be designed:

  1. Brief description of the technology or recommended practices
  2. Impact or change desired: (e.g., improve the quality of X of all _______ by 35%; change farmers’ beliefs in ________management by 30%)
  3. Target audience: (e.g., 500 tree operators in ____ municipalities in _______ province adopting recommended practices ; 10,000 growers in _______ municipalities in ______ provinces can identify the characteristics of quality seedlings, demand quality seedlings, and grow such seedlings)
  4. Variables to be monitored: (e.g., tree operators’ cultural management practices, etc. )
  5. Methods to be used for each variable: (e.g., surveys of nursery operators and tree growers; focus group discussions; participant observation; assessments of attitudes)
  6. Consequences of change: (e.g., nursery operators grow quality seedlings, tree growers can recognize quality seedlings, reduced or zero tree mortality rates, reduced expenditure for planting materials, higher income, policy support to facilitate wider adoption - policy makers pass an ordinance that will require nursery operators to follow quality assurance checks as a requirement for a business license, etc)
  7. Change motivations: (e.g., save $$$; time; labor)

Stakeholder participation

The tree nursery project will have to take a few steps backward to do the following:

  • better understand stakeholders or intended project beneficiaries — what are their practices, reasons for doing them, resistance points. For this, the field staff will need to spend more time to “hang out” with the operators and growers. The agricultural anthropologist, Jeffery Bentley, has a practical to-do list for “hanging out” which I will share with you in another post.
  • create opportunities for nursery operators and tree growers to participate in defining the problem and finding the pathways to solve it.

ICRAF has carried out a farmer-led development and scaling up of tree-based options in Africa and it would be useful to learn from their experience.

Will appreciate your comments.

Categories: Scaling up
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Communication tasks to help achieve food security

May 23, 2008 · No Comments

As the rice crisis is being felt around the globe, I thought it is timely to think about how communication science can be harnessed to help achieve the long-term goal of food security. I have alluded to this in earlier posts, such as the one on the ACIAR scoping study on brown planthopper/virus disease management.

Key informant interviews with policy makers in Vietnam and a university president in Morocco revealed that agricultural development projects could have wide ramifications. Countries aspire for food security in order to achieve the ultimate goal of social stability. Whether the crop is faba bean in Morocco or rice in Indonesia or Vietnam, helping farmers produce enough food for home consumption and sell in the market remains a key objective. One of them noted, “Many farmers are the poorest of the poor. Without help, these rural residents will migrate to the city and cause more social problems.”

Rice farmer on way home after field visit, Central Java, Indonesia

Donors and policy makers may raise the key question: How can communication science be harnessed to help achieve food security? For a new initiative we are developing to help rice farmers in Asia reduce their pre-production crop losses, I was asked to list the essential communication tasks. I came up with the following:

  1. Design and conduct FGDs and farmer surveys to document baselines and post-intervention changes to monitor impact of the project outputs on farmers’ pest management decisions.
  2. Develop the capacity of national agricultural research and extension systems (NARES) partners in farm survey techniques, data processing, analyses, interpretations, participatory approaches, and scaling up processes.
  3. Assist NARES in planning, implementation, and monitoring of scaling up initiatives using a participatory approach in developing multi-stakeholder partnerships, designing and pretesting prototype communication materials, conducting formative and summative evaluation.
  4. Document and report all scaling up processes, activities and results across countries involved in the project in print (paper for publication in peer-reviewed journal) and niche blog.
  5. Participate in tracking the impact of project outputs.

What other tasks do you suggest should be included? Please post your comments.

Categories: Scaling up
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How to use diagnostic workshops to plan R&D projects

May 20, 2008 · No Comments

In our successful development initiatives in Vietnam, a common element that stands out is the use of a participatory approach in planning and implementation. This has been alluded to in earlier posts. To get our research and extension partners on the same page, our first step is to carry out a diagnostic approach. This approach aims to build quality partnerships among stakeholders and promote shared objectives to finding solutions to a given problem. The approach starts with a diagnostic workshop involving stakeholders.

In the workshop, analytical techniques are used to facilitate achieving shared views of the problem and objectives in research, extension, and policy. Descriptive techniques are also employed in the workshops to gain a common understanding of the management perspectives of the problem. These include the use of decision trees illustrating interactions between time and management options, pay-off matrices, and cause-effect analysis. Another important activity in the workshop is the on-farm dialogue with farmers to better understand their perceptions of the problem. Follow-up workshops are conducted to review and redesign research and extension activities.

A typical workshop consists of about 30 participants from research and extension with a mix of specializations in resource management (crop, pest, weeds, postharvest, water, etc.) and the social sciences. Wherever appropriate, farmers, NGO representatives, and local government officials are included. The main objective is to build a consensus and obtain a shared view of the problems and consequently develop a shared strategy for action. The workshop serves as the platform to introduce new ideas and methodology and recent research findings as well as to gain support from national agricultural authorities. Throughout these workshops, four basic points are used to guide the discussions:

  • Separate the people from the problems
  • Focus on interests, not positions
  • Generate options
  • Develop objective criteria and make judgments based on them

Read more …

Categories: Development communication · Scaling up
Tagged: ,

How to plan an exit strategy for your development project

May 8, 2008 · 4 Comments

When we’re tied up with a successful development project, it is sometimes difficult to let go and allow our partners in the community to take over. Planning a painless exit strategy is a critical task for those of us involved in rural development. I asked my colleagues in the university to think about these questions with a promise to feature their answers on Devcompage:

1) Should we leave a successful project in the hands of our local partners?
2) How long should it take before we leave a development project and let our local partners take over?
2) What would be a fool-proof exit strategy?

My friend, Efren Saz, Director of the Institute of Strategic Research and Development Studies, emailed me his take on these questions. Here it is:

I think these questions ought to provoke many of us who claim to have worked in projects that involve communities.

1. On the first question: Should we leave a successful project in the hands of our partners? My answer to this is, if we could not leave it in their hands, then it is not successful at all. A successful project should be run by our partners be they communities, bureaucracies, universities, organizations, etc. This really brings us to the issue of ownership. Much has been said about this and I subscribe to the truism that for a project to succeed, it should be owned by those who have a stake to its success. If we start a project with this in mind, there is no issue about turning over because the project is theirs from day one.

Our role might be more intense at the beginning but it should not be confused with ownership. The project is owned by “them”–partners and as the days move on we recede from the picture until the project stage finally ends and the project is mainstreamed. This means our roles will have to evolve according to the life of the project until that time when, according to veterans, we become obsolete, meaning they won’t need us anymore. Now for the sake of argument let’s say we did not do the things we ought to do at the outset, there must be a turnover, yes by all means we should turnover the project to our partners. Fears that the project might fail after turning over to the partners is simply anchored on the elitist belief that “we” know better than “them.” Also, this fear is probably a product of a realization that we may have been remiss in “preparing” the “natives” for “self rule.”

A side issue on this is about the partners’ response. The many laments that I heard about this is: Now that there is no more foreign assistance (read: budgets, vehicles, travel, supplies, conferences, honoraria, etc) they’re going to give the project to us. How can we assure the same level of intensity and commitment when we don’t have the same level of resources at our disposal? Well, you just have to leave it to your partners one way or the other. You’re not going to stay in the project forever, they are.

2. How long before we leave? I say there is no fixed time table because the problems and milieu vary. However, projects usually have a life because they are supposed to deal with specific problems. Some take three years, five years or more. I believe the benchmarks that we had set in the beginning ought to tell us if we have achieved our goals and should also tell us whether its time to go.

3. What is a fool-proof exit strategy? I’ll start by asking the question “is there a fool-proof exit strategy? I have read somewhere that one failure of management of any project is failure to end the project whether it is successful or a failure. If it failed, we want to continue until we succeed. If it succeeded, we must continue because “sayang.” I must confess that in my previous and current involvements, we never have yet exited a project in an organized, systematic way.

In one, I remember, the exit was kind of unceremonious because the project was left hanging in the air with the loss of support (financial), the many threats by some quarters (rebels) and the general failure of the many initiatives under the project. I believe we committed the usual mistake of hatching ideas by ourselves
and bringing these to the “people” because it is “good for them.” We thought we knew what was good for them (and they didn’t). It was “our” project which we designed for “them.” From hindsight, we could have prepared ourselves before even thinking of preparing them (social prep). WE could have disabused ourselves first of the idea that we knew better. We could have asked them what they needed and how best could these be met. We could have employed our skills in SWOT, problem tree analysis, the whole RRA/PRA tool box but we thought we knew better.

Going back to the original question, what is a fool-proof exit strategy? I think, the first steps become part of the exit strategy already. When you let them become owners from day one, when methodologies are systematic and clear, when goals are clear and achievable, when lines of authority are clear, when commitments are firm, you will have formulated already your exit strategy. Fool-proof? Maybe maybe not.

Thanks to Efren Saz for this post.

Categories: Development communication · Media campaigns · Scaling up
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How to formulate shared objectives with stakeholders

May 4, 2008 · No Comments

How does one ensure that a development project will succeed? One simple rule that we have learned in working with the national agricultural research systems (NARS) is: when NARS partners feel they own the project, they will make sure it will succeed.

Our efforts in Vietnam — no early spray campaign in Long An, “Three Reductions, Three Gains” in Can Tho and Tien Giang provinces, entertainment-education in Vinh Long, and environmental radio soap opera in the Mekong Delta — have successfully demonstrated the value of cultivating local ownership in a project. Thus, from day one, a project ceases to be called an IRRI project or an ACIAR project, but OUR project.

Plant Protection Department and water agency officials track location of sluice gates, Tien Giang, Vietnam

Farmers in Suphan Buri, Thailand listen to other farmers' feedback on new varieties

Participatory planning process

Quality partnerships and local ownerships can be facilitated through a multi stakeholder participatory planning process involving various stakeholders. For a development project, stakeholders might be those from research, extension, mass media, universities, NGOs and local governments. This planning process will involve running a series workshops focusing on jointly identifying the problems, needs and opportunities, developing and evaluating intervention options and prototype materials, and developing hypotheses, instruments, and outlining data requirements for research.

For a scaling up or extension initiative, the workshops could be phased with field activities such as baseline surveys, audience analysis, pretesting, and management monitoring. It is at the workshops where these are developed - strategies, the campaign slogan, media mix selection, pilot sites, prototype materials, and pretesting. The implementation plans are also finalized by partners in the workshops. This process encourages transparency, friendship and cooperation and serves as an important vehicle towards scaling up extension.

A good starting point in the participatory process is to develop a log frame for the project. As a project design and management tool, it is a simple method of tying in goals and objectives into inputs, processes and outputs.

Click here for sample log frame …

Categories: Development communication · Scaling up
Tagged: , , , ,

Ronny Adhikarya reads Devcompage

May 1, 2008 · 3 Comments

Ronny Adhikarya left a comment in “About” that thrilled me no end. For those of you who are not directly working in the field of development communication, Ronny is my guru. He is the father of strategic extension campaigns and I worship the ground he walks on because he is the expert. He has written these landmark books in media campaigns: Motivating Farmers for Action: How Strategic Multi-Media Campaigns Can Help published by GTZ and Strategic Extension Campaign: A Participatory-Oriented Method of Agricultural Extension published by FAO.

These two books are a must-read for those of us working in communication — mass communication, development communication, agricultural extension, marketing and advertising. They provide some of the theoretical basis for the principles we use to design media campaigns aimed to bring about behavioral change.

I wrote a bit about him in an earlier post on “How to develop a communication strategy”. I hope he won’t mind if I say that when we were at the East-West Center in Honolulu some 35 years ago, he was a young guy who wore jeans and drove a sports car with a rolled up beach mat stashed under the seat. Whenever I walked by his office at Lincoln Hall, he would often engage me in a discussion on population and communication issues, which was the work I used to do before I went to Hawaii. Then, I used to wonder how he could be so obsessed with intellectual stuff when Hanauma Bay was beckoning. But that’s how Ronny was.

Many years later our paths crossed again when Ronny, as senior FAO extension officer, was backstopping the FAO Intercountry Rice Integrated Pest Control Programme coordinated by Peter Kenmore. That one got me into the mainstream of communication campaigns and introduced me to IRRI. For all this, I want to say to Ronny and Peter: Mahalo!

Welcome Ronny to Devcompage. I hope you will post comments to share your insights and clarify some of the issues that are tackled here.

Categories: Development communication · Media campaigns
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