DATE: / 9-5-2013
TIME: / 9am
LOCATION: / F&S Ethiopia Office
Participants:
Wikke Tuinhout – Agri-Hub Ethiopia (chair)
Rahel Tessema – SNV
Seblewongel Deneke – CIDA
Haregwien Admassu - CIDA
Ephrem Tesema – ILRI
Yewubdar Haile – AGP AMDe
Nigist Shiferaw – Send a Cow
Drew Burnett - TechnoServe
Rozina Ketsela – ATA
Sarah Hewitt – ATA
Tenagne Kidane – MoA
Gerrit Holtland – Agri-Hub Coordinator
Program of the meeting:
- Introduction on APF, Agri-Hub and Working Group(s)
- Presentation by ILRI/LIVES project with discussion
- Presentation survey results
- Presentation on gender support track Agri-ProFocus
- Discussion on results and way forward
- Introduction about APF, Agri-Hub and the Working Group
Wikke gives a brief introduction on APF, the Agri-Hub and the Working Group to the new people in our group. Gerrit explains about the other Working Groups and the discussion with the APF headquarters in the Netherlands about initiative and funding.
The Agri-Hub wants to create more initiative locally – by Ethiopian partners – and is trying to get some funding for that. This also means that local funding has to come available.
- Presentation by Ephrem Tesema on ILRI/LIVES project
The presentation is included as an annex to this report. There were some questions and discussion in the end, including:
- the framework that was used
- how to convince your co-workers
- difficulties in different areas
- Presentation survey results
Wikke presented the results of the survey. The presentation is included as an annex to this report. The conclusion of the results is that overall the respondents find most things equally important (learning, practical experience, things the working group / Agri-Hub should do…)
Wikke will do some further analysis of the results to find out whether there are differences between the kind of organisations and the preferences they have.
- Presentation on gender support track Agri-ProFocus
Wikke and Gerrit explain the ongoing developments in the Netherlands about a global support track which is being designed for different Agri-Hubs – starting with 5 East African countries. There is money available for the international part of this support track: an international coach.
We, from the Agri-Hub would like to work toward an Amharic publication which contains the cases of the organisations that joined the track, with the tools used, the experiences using it and the changes made to improve it. The group likes this idea of a local publication dedicated to Ethiopian experiences.
The program of the support track would be:
- Training to create a common ground and discuss tools.
- Participating organizations present their case and challenges.
- Coaches discuss approach on each organisation.
- Coaching of organisations/programs.
- Experience sharing event(s).
- Workshop for participants to present their results.
- Coach(es) to make a publication in local language(s)
The members of the WG think the coaching track is a good idea and looks better built up than last year. But the WG first wants to finalize to ToR and decide what role the WG should play in regard to this support track before going into further detail. This is no reason not to go ahead with further planning of the support track.
- Discussion on results and way forward
We brainstorm on the activities that the WG could and should organize:
- sharing experience and documentation that is already there
- adjust this sharing of experience to different levels of knowledge
- inventory of which VC (and which part of the VC) organisations are working on
- linkage to other working groups
We briefly discuss measuring the results of the activities of the WG. It is very hard to do this, as knowledge sharing is very hard to measure, especially
Way forward:
- The results of the Survey will be further analyzed and shared
- The ToR will be finalized according to the results and discussions by Rahel, Seblewongel and Yewubdar. Inlcuding:
- How to invite people to the working group (marketing tools)
- How many annual meetings
- What kind of experience sharing - how
- What kind of information sharing - how
- A next meeting will be scheduled in about one months time
- The next meeting will consist of:
- Experience sharing presentation
- Guidance through online platform(s) and online tooling from the Agri-Hub
- Selecting a chair person
- Discussing activities of WG based on ToR
- The Agri-Hub will finalize a ToR for the support track and send it around the WG for further comment.
Annex:
- Presentation introduction on APF / Agri-Hub and Working Group
- Presentation ILRI/LIVES
- Presentation results survey and support track