AGRI-SERVICE ETHIOPIA Strategies and Guidelines on Community
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AGRI-SERVICE ETHIOPIA Strategies and Guidelines on Community Learning and Action Prepared by: Amanuel Assefa and Solomon Legesse February 2009 Addis Ababa i TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGES 1. INTRODUCTION...................................................................................................... 1 2 BACKGROUND .......................................................................................................... 2 2.1 BRIEF ACCOUNTS OF INSTITUTIONAL LEARNING ..................................................... 2 2.2. REFLECTIONS ON ASE COMMUNITY TRAINING APPROACHES............................... 8 2.3. RATIONALE .............................................................................................................. 11 3. THEORETICAL FOUNDATION .......................................................................... 17 Typologies of institutional frameworks for research and development..................... 18 3.1 NATIONAL AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH SYSTEMS/NARS .......................................... 18 3.2 AGRICULTURAL KNOWLEDGE AND INFORMATION SYSTEMS/AKIS........................... 18 3.3 AGRICULTURAL INNOVATION SYSTEMS/AIS ............................................................ 19 3.4. CONCLUDING REMARKS ON THE THEORIES .......................................................... 22 4. COMMUNITY LEARNING AND ACTION ....................................................... 23 4.1. PRINCIPLES OF COLA ............................................................................................... 24 4.2 GOALS ...................................................................................................................... 25 4.2.1 Overall goal ........................................................................................................ 25 4.2.2 Sub goals ............................................................................................................ 25 4.3 MAJOR COMPONENTS OF COLA ................................................................................ 26 4.3.1. Establishing and managing own training Center ................................................. 26 4.3.2. Establishing and facilitating community of practice.............................................. 27 4.3.3 Knowledge management .................................................................................. 27 4.3.4. Scaling up (Making a Greater Impact at the National Level) ........................ 29 4.3.5 Community Learning Forum .......................................................................... 30 5. GUIDELINES ON COLF ......................................................................................... 30 5.1 COMPONENTS OF COLF ......................................................................................... 31 5.1.1 Social learning: ................................................................................................... 31 5.1.2 Skill training & entrepreneurship development: .................................................... 34 5.1.3 Participatory Innovation Development (PID) ....................................................... 36 5.1.4 Livelihood Based Literacy (LBL): .......................................................................... 40 5. 2 COLF OPERATIONAL PROCEDURES .......................................................................... 41 5.2.1 Pre-CoLF establishment ....................................................................................... 41 5.2.2 Establishing the forum ......................................................................................... 43 5.2.3 Running the forum.............................................................................................. 46 5.3 CERTIFICATE OF RECOGNITION .................................................................................. 49 5.4 ROLE OF ACTORS IN IMPLEMENTATION OF COLF ....................................................... 50 6. MONITORING AND EVALUATION OF COLA ............................................. 51 6.1 COLA OBJECTIVE:................................................................................................... 51 ii 6.2 PURPOSE, RESULT, INDICATORS AND KEY ACTIONS BY THEME ............................. 51 6.2.1. Establish and managing own Training center ............................................... 51 6.2.2. Community of Practice ................................................................................... 52 6.2.3. Knowledge Management ................................................................................ 52 6.2.4. Community Learning Forum ......................................................................... 53 6.2.5. Scaling up ....................................................................................................... 54 6.3 POST COLF EVALUATION ......................................................................................... 54 7.0 COMMUNITY INNOVATION AND DEVELOPMENT FUND STRATEGY AND GUIDELINES ...................................................................................................... 56 7.1 PURPOSE: ................................................................................................................. 56 7.2 RESULT: ................................................................................................................... 56 7.3. ELIGIBLE GROUPS AND AREAS/ACTIVITIES ........................................................... 56 7.4. PROPOSED MODELS FOR REVOLVING FUND MANAGEMENT/FINANCIAL INTERMEDIATION .......................................................................................................... 57 7.5. IMPLEMENTATION PROCEDURE ............................................................................. 59 7.5.1. Designing a call ................................................................................................. 59 7.5.2 Appraising the proposal ....................................................................................... 59 7.5.3. Approving appraised proposal and fund release procedure ..................................... 61 7.6. MONITORING AND EVALUATION .............................................................................. 61 7.7. TERMS AND CONDITION FOR FUND APPLICATION ................................................ 62 7.7.1. Grant: ............................................................................................................... 62 7.7.2. Credit ................................................................................................................ 62 7.8. ROLE AND RESPONSIBILITY OF CONCERNED BODIES ............................................. 62 ANNEX 1: KNOWLEDGE TRACKING IN AGRICULTURE AND GENDER ............ 66 ANNEX 2: PARTICIPATORY LEARNING METHODOLOGIES AND TECHNIQUES ............................................................................................................... 73 ANNEX 3: PROJECT IDEA FORMAT ...................................................................... 90 ANNEX 4: STANDARD PROJECT PROPOSAL FORMAT................................. 93 ANNEX 5: CIDF APPRAISAL COMMITTEE MINUTE ....................................... 94 REFERENCES ................................................................................................................ 95 iii 1. Introduction Agri-service Ethiopia (ASE) is one of the oldest national NGOs in this country. It has worked in the area of rural development since 1969, primarily with smallholder farmers in remote places of the country. Currently, ASE is implementing development program in six weredas of three Regional States; namely, Enabse Sar Midir and Tehuldere weredas in Amhara regional state; Berek, Goro & Gelana weredas in Oromia Regional State; and Amaro wereda in Southern Nations and Nationalities Peoples Regional States. Since its inception ASE‟s main thrust was community training and extension. In accordance to the recent strategic changes of the organization, Community Empowerment has been officially adopted as the main institutional philosophy of ASE. In principle community empowerment has been the anticipated goal of the organizations ever since its establishment as many of the program components (mostly service delivery oriented) were designed to achieve community empowerment, in a sense that the living conditions of the people are improved as a result of improving access to several services and information. The recent change however is different because community empowerment is not only seen as a far reaching goal but also as a basic institutional function, which envisages programs formed by key activities that ensures community empowerment as an immediate output. In other words, ASE is consciously engaged in community empowerment processes with anticipated goals of bringing cultural and institutional innovation to contribute to sustainable development, poverty reduction and improved governance systems at local level. To achieve these goals, ASE adopted two important strategies. These include the development of Community Based Institutions (CBIs) and running Community Learning and action (CoLA) activities. Theses are indeed the overarching strategies of the organization, while several strategic documents that support the implementation of these core strategies are also developed and used. This strategy document is basically on CoLA. It is not however only meant to produce a guiding framework on how to implement Community Learning and Action related activities, but it also contributes to the documentation of some of the previous