PELUM Association - Uganda and PROLINNOVA have taken the initiative to organise an exchange and capacity building workshop on farmer-led documentation for sustainable agriculture and natural resource management (NRM). This five-day event will take place from 6th- 10th November in Uganda.
BACKGROUND AND RATIONALE
It is increasingly clear that successful development of sustainable agriculture and NRM depends on the effective interaction between knowledge and experiences of local farmer communities with expertise of development agents. NGOs, CBOs and other development organisations therefore seek to mobilise, document and share local knowledge as an
important part of the development process. In many cases, however, this is done in an extractive mode, where outsiders control the process and local knowledge and experiences are stored in their offices.
There are, however, isolated experiences with what is called farmer-led documentation as an empowering process in which local communities take the lead role in the documentation process and where results are used by community members for purposes of internal learning
(within the community) and exchange between communities (horizontal sharing) and communities, development agents and policy makers (vertical). These documentation and
knowledge sharing processes assist in making relevant experiences and good practices at community level visible as a starting point for further farmer-led agricultural development.
Some make effective use of traditional methods and media such as storytelling, drama or dance whereas others have introduced successfully the use of modern ICTs including digital photo and video.
Though development agents show an increasing interest in farmer-led documentation, little is known of the best designs of such documentation processes, and the available and appropriate media and their use, including those making use of modern ICTs. Another set of important questions relate to the impacts of farmer-led documentation, how farmerdocumentation has led to knowledge spread, a wider development process and ultimately to livelihoods improvements. The three organisations have therefore joined hands to organise a
workshop to start answering these questions.
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