This guide is intended to assist facilitators in conducting a workshop with Extension and Advisory Service (EAS) providers for assessing their capacity needs. This guide has been compiled by the Centre for Research on Innovation and Science Policy (CRISP) for AESA with the assistance of a research grant from the Global Forum for Rural Advisory Services (GFRAS).
This document on Good Practices in Extension Research and Evaluation is developed as a hands on reference manual to help young researchers, research students, and field extension functionaries in choosing the right research methods for conducting quality research and evaluation in extension. This manual has been compiled by the resource persons who participated in the Workshop on ‘Good
In early 2020, GFRAS provided support to the Agricultural Extension in South Asia (AESA) Network and the Bangladesh Agricultural Extension Network (BAEN) in order to customize one of the NELK Modules in the context of Bangladesh. The BAEN Executive Committee selected the GFRAS NELK Module 7 on ‘Facilitation for Development’ for customization. AESA and BAEN jointly implemented the development of the customized module for Bangladesh. The process of customization consisted of five phases spread over a span of six months.
This report presents policy, market, and agriculture transition in the Northern Uplands of Lao People's Democratic Republic aims to contribute to such a dialogue by providing: (a) a policy-relevant typology of the structural characteristics and transition patterns of the principal small-holder agriculture systems in the Northern Uplands; and (b) recommendations to strengthen Government's facilitation of a more sustainable and equitable upland transition. The report also provides input into the ongoing dialogue under the umbrella of the joint Government-donor working group on uplands.
This booklet is the third in the CIAT in Asia Research for Development series. It was based on the experiences of researchers and farmers working with the AusAID-funded Forages for Smallholders Project (FSP) in Southeast Asia from 1995 to 1999. This project was a partnership of smallholder farmers, development workers and researchers who were using participatory approaches to developing forage technologies on farms.
“Working with the CDAIS project has given us not only knowledge and skills, but also the confidence to make connections with the government and other partners.” says Mrs Dao Sansihalath, member of the Xanakham women’s pig rearing group. “What we have learnt is practical and is helping us grow our business without having to make a lot of costly mistakes.” This has been achieved through support from the CDAIS project since 2016.
The author shares her experience of participating in a training that was organized by the Tropical Agriculture Platform – Agricultural Innovation Systems (TAP-AIS) project, ‘Developing Capacities in Agricultural Innovation Systems: Scaling up the Tropical Agriculture Platform Framework’, implemented by FAO’s Research & Extension Unit, funded by the European Union as a component of the ‘Development Smart Innovation through Research in Agriculture (DeSIRA): Towards Climate-relevant Agricultural and Knowledge Innovation Systems’ initiative.
Development is the process of change and facilitation helps in accelerating this process through the change agents‘ or the extension service provider. While working with farmers, agri-traders and processors, facilitation refers to promote group learning, building consensus and enhancing participation in collective actions. A facilitator has multidimensional roles to play.
In theory, under the federal structure agricultural extension services can serve communities better as it aims to be client responsive and accountable to its consumers at the village level. However, poor understanding of federalism that has only recently emerged from the persisting centralized and feudal conceptions, limited practices of democratic norms and values primarily due to the lack of understanding of local governance, and limited commitment of political actors and policy makers to federalism, may derail the good intentions behind federalism.
The new Constitution of Nepal (2015) has initiated federal, provincial, and local governments in Nepal, each bestowed with respective rights, responsibilities, power and authority. While developing the new mechanism of governance, the Constitution has given immense authority as well as responsibility to local governments, which is unprecedented and has never been experienced before in the history of Nepal. Along with the restructuring of the state, the institutional mechanism of the agriculture sector has also been restructured.