Entries from June 2008

How to tap multi-stakeholder partnerships in scaling up initiatives

June 26, 2008 · 1 Comment

In 2006, I was on a Center-Commissioned External Review team to assess a program of a CGIAR institute which was implemented in several countries. After field visits, document reviews and talking to various people, I was totally improssed with the way that Institute has used partnerships as an approach to program governance and implementation. The Institute chose not to maintain expensive research laboratories in its headquarters but allocated donor funds to help key partners carry out their part of the research program. This distributive approach to fund allocation considerably strengthened partner universities and NARS.

In work that we have done in Asia, impact and multiplier effects were achieved only when our NARS partners were committed and had local ownership of the project. Multi-stakeholder partnerships has thus become our modus-operandi.

A scaling up initiative is essentially a research and development (R&D) project as it performs the twin functions of monitoring and evaluation and extension. To ensure sustainability, donors often require R&D projects to adopt multi-stakeholder partnerships as an approach in project governance and implementation. The range of partners could come from networks, donors, international research organizations, universities, national agricultural research and extension system (NARS), non-government organizations (NGOs), local government units, environmental organizations, health and nutrition sector, private companies, and men and women farmers.

Stakeholder meeting for radio soap opera project, Ho Chi Minh City

How to select project partners

Partners are often selected following established criteria of a project. For instance, in an integrated pest management IPM) project, the relevant partners would inevitably those from the Ministry of Agriculture’s plant protection department, universities, NGOs, local government, and farmers groups. However, partner selection may go beyond the written priorities for selecting partners. Often, there is a preference to work with strong partners who are committed and have demonstrated their ability to get the job done.

Despite the use of participatory approaches such as joint planning of collaborative activities, the major challenges in working through partnerships are ensuring that the partnerships are mutually beneficial, that there are no unrealistic assumptions and expectations about the project, and activities are carried out as planned.

How to get partner commitment

To enlist commitment of partners, it is important to find out their needs and expectations. This is best done informally. Once their requirements are known, it is easier for the project to work with them and get their commitment to the project and to commit to a timeline.

How to deal with dysfunctional partners

Partnership conflicts sometimes occur and affect project implementation. In extreme cases, a dysfunctional partners may have to be removed. One way to effectively deal with a problematic partner is to dilute his decion-making authority and eventually sideline him by increasing the number of project sites within the country. By doing this, it could foster competition which could result in better project performance and the problem is resolved without a loss of face.

Another way is to understand why the partners are not functioning and help them get back on track. A general pattern in partnership projects is to find partners working fine at the start of the project and later drop out. By understanding and supporting partners, decisions to drop them can be arrived at amicably. This will enable the partner to gracefully bow out of the project.

Categories: Scaling up
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How to mine the invisible web

June 16, 2008 · 8 Comments

With students back for first semester classes in our part of the world, Internet cafes are abuzz with students doing their literature search for assignments, term papers, or thesis review of literature. At the moment, the most popular search engine appears to be Google. As of June 14, 2008, the estimated size of Google’s index is about 20 billion web pages, making it the largest crawler-based search engine, based on reported numbers.

So you think that with an Internet search engine like Google or Google Scholar, you’ve done a comprehensive review of all available information, besides those articles which are pay-per-view or for paid subscribers only. Think again. Studies have shown that the hidden web has as much as 500 billion web pages.

Search engines crawl only a small portion or the shallow part of the web. “Invisible web” or deep web refers to information available on the world wide web but is not accessible to general all-purpose search engines. Some materials hidden from the usual search engines include dynamic content, unlinked content, private web, and limited access content.

How to find the invisible web

To search the invisible web, here’s a list of some notable databases that we should check out (see Robert Lackie’s “Those Dark Hiding Places: Invisible Web Revealed, Wendy Boswell):

  • Librarians’ Internet Index - websites you can trust
  • FindLaw - “The highest-trafficked legal Web site”
  • About.com
  • Direct Search site put together by Gary Price
  • Invisible Web Directory -put together by Gary Price and search guru Chris Sherman. This site is a directory of searchable databases, organized by subject
  • Resource Discovery Network - has resources mostly from the United Kingdom, and is extremely well-organized and very searchable
  • InfoMine - an incredible resource that at last count included over 100,000 links and access to hundreds, if not thousands, of databases
  • Virtual Library
  • Intute - a free online service providing access to the very best Web resources for education and research.
  • Internet archive - a digital library of internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form.
  • Beaucoup! - a search spot to help search the invisible web.
  • Digital Librarian - a librarian’s choice of the best of the web.
  • ScienceResearch.com - A portal allowing searchable access to numerous scientific journals and databases.
  • Agricola Database - provides citations to agriculture literature.
  • Energy Citations Database - provides free access to science research to over 2.3 million science research citations.
  • Envirofacts - EPA’s one-stop source for environmental information.
  • Plants Database provides standardized information about the vascular plants, mosses, liverworts, hornworts, and lichens of the U.S. and its territories.
  • PlantFacts - an international knowledge bank and multimedia learning center on plants.
  • Window to My Environment database - provides a wide range of federal, state, and local information about environmental conditions and features in an area of your choice.

Categories: Development communication · General
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How to be participatory in a scaling up project

June 10, 2008 · No Comments

The rhetoric on the value of participation isn’t just lip service. In our work in Asia, the most participatory projects tended to have more impact. Consider this– in the “Three Reductions, Three Gains” or “Ba Giam, Ba Tang” media campaign, the local governments of the Mekong provinces provided about US$345,000 additional resources to launch similar campaigns. Initial budgets of the pilot campaigns in Can Tho and Tien Giang provinces totaled only US$40,000. A specific line item budget for “Ba Giam, Ba Tang” was also written into the budget of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) to support its implementation in all provinces.

Developing prototype materials for "Three Reductions, Three Gains"

Plant protection partners discuss campaign strategy, Can Tho, Vietnam

To enhance multiplier effects we actively involved partners from the central and local government, university, research, extension and media, in planning, development, implementation, and evaluation activities. This was done through a series of participatory workshops with emphasis on establishing quality partnerships and local ownerships.

The workshops developed the strategies, the campaign slogan, “Ba Giam Ba Tang”, selected the media to be used and pilot sites, prepared and pretested the campaign materials. Implementation plans were also finalized by partners in the workshops. The process had encouraged transparency, friendship and cooperation and had served as an important vehicle towards facilitating scaling up extension. It has helped in multiplying the campaign pilot by leveraging local resources to increase spread thus increasing returns to modest project investments.

With the limited resources Asian governments are allocating to extension,  media campaigns, especially when implemented through multi-stakeholder partnerships, can be an effective option for reaching farmers.

“Three Reductions, Three Gains” key partners in Vietnam: Nguyen Huu Huan (vice director for plant protection, MARD), Ho Van Chien (director, southern regional plant protection center), Pham Van Quynh (vice director for agriculture, Can Tho province), Pham Sy Tan (agronomist, Cuu Long Delta Rice Research Institute or CLRRI), Pham Van Du (plant pathologist, CLRRI)

Categories: Development communication · Scaling up
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How to initiate farmer experiments

June 9, 2008 · 5 Comments

A few days ago, I gave a talk on participatory planning process, impact planning framework and farmer participatory research at a tree nursery project meeting. Because a colleague had wanted it to be a stakeholders’ meeting and get on with the development of their project’s scaling up plan, I suggested to clear the cobwebs first. The project leaders would need to address issues of partnerships and how to build trust among partners in order to reach project goals and ensure sustainability. In my talk, I stressed that farmer trials or in their case, tree nursery operators’ experiments are a prerequisite to scaling up. Perhaps because I said that without these trials, their project won’t fly, they acquiesced to that rule. But what the project staff worked on in the afternoon reflects a worrisome lack of conscious effort to wait until all stakeholders are on the same page before tasks are assigned and the project timeline is developed.

What is farmer participatory research?

Farmer experiments or farmer participatory research (FPR) is an approach, which involves encouraging farmers to engage in experiments in their own fields so that they can learn, adopt new technologies and spread them to other farmers. With the scientist acting as facilitator, farmers and scientists closely work together from initial design of the research project to data gathering, analysis, final conclusions, and follow-up actions. This step, sometimes known as innovation evaluation is essential for communication as well as for initiating diffusion. The main advantage of this approach is that farmers “learn by doing” and decision rules are modified on the basis of direct experience. To shape learning, interpretations of experience must provide information about what happened, why it happened and whether what happened was satisfactory or unsatisfactory. New information, technologies and concepts may be better communicated to farmers through the FPR approach.

Farmers meeting with agricultural extension officer in Suphan Buri, Thailand

How is FPR carried out?

1. Planning meeting

Initiate participatory experiments in collaboration with the local agricultural extension technician and the village head. In each village or district, invite 10 to 25 farmers. With the researcher acting as the facilitator, conduct group meetings with farmers. These half-day meetings can begin with general discussions about rice growing and related problems. Later, discussions should focus on the topic of relevance to both farmers and researchers. For instance, in pest management, the discussions may focus on the rice leaffolder, concerns about their damages, losses they could cause and methods of control. Encourage farmers to discuss whether the leaffolder needed control and whether anyone would volunteer to participate in evaluating a simple hypothesis.

Read more …

Categories: Scaling up
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How to “hang out” and learn more from farmers

June 6, 2008 · 2 Comments

In an earlier post, I promised to write about Jeff Bentley ’s guidelines for “hanging out” to get the most from farmers’ local knowledge. In 1999, Jeff presented these in a training course on ethnoscience techniques that we organized in Suphan Buri, Thailand. Here’s Bentley’s list for eliciting folk knowledge:

  • There is knowledge associated with each concept.
  • Do not ask leading questions; questions that suggest the answers.
  • Do not preach. Preaching is the number one cause of silence.
  • Share some information with local people, especially if they ask a direct question, of it is natural to slip in a comment.
  • Use interviews, group interviews preferred.
  • Listen to people without interrupting, just listen.
  • Do not make fun of people.
  • Hang out.
  • Have rapport and patience.
  • Use short questionnaires.

Sharing a meal with farmers in Central Java

To Bentley’s list, let me add these few tips to remember:

  • Keep an open mind and listen more. Do not push your own agenda (e.g. a special “tool” or concept you have developed which you think will solve farmers’ problems).
  • Make the farmers feel that you are truly interested in learning about what they think and do with regard to the topic at hand.
  • Be conversational. The field interview is some sort of directed story telling where you probe and pursue issues that come during the conversation.
  • Empathize - try to be on equal footing with farmers in order to establish rapport and build trust.
  • Although you may have more expertise, never engage the farmers in a debate nor pass judgment on their views or practices.
  • Always remember your objective in talking to the farmers – to learn what they are doing, find out their problems, identify the root cause, and perhaps explore how your “tool” could find a way into their crop management and decision-making.
  • Avoid questions that yield yes/no answers.

Read more ….

Categories: Development communication · Scaling up
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