FLD experience and plans of DURAS project

Oliver Oliveros

We are currently organizing a an analysis and documentation workshop of the DURAS Project (www.duras-project.net) which are scheduled in Janaury 2008. Some 20 months after the launching of the 12 DURAS-funded initiatives, the implementation of the DURAS Competitive Grants Scheme (CGS) has been a very insightful experience. It has afforded both the Project Office and the various stakeholders involved in the 12 projects a rich experience and handful of lessons learnt along the way.  However, we feel that much still has to be done to increase the opportunities for learning from these experiences, as well as sharing the learning and building a wider body of knowledge on and further understanding and appreciation of involving various actors in the agricultural research and innovation process. We need to capture the dynamics involved in these multi-actor, inter-country/regional effort by further reflecting, examining and documenting what has happened involving the various stakeholders themselves involved in each of the projects.

Understanding and documenting the factors and conditions which enhance as well as those which limit the partnership in agricultural research and innovation process is central to the spirit of DURAS. As such, the documentation workshops that we are organizing will involve development of a common methodological framework that will guide the analysis of partnership building and its resultant effects as well as a systematic analysis and documentation of the project experience jointly undertaken by both project staff and participants.  

I would be very interested to learn from others and to generate more ideas on how best we can organize our documentation workshop.