AGRA invites ASHC to deliver ISFM write-shop
AGRA invites ASHC to deliver ISFM write-shop for the Soil Health Program grantees
The Soil Health Program is one of AGRA’s flagships investments. 94 grants worth US$ 90 have been awarded in 13 sub-Saharan Africa countries, with just over half of them focused on deploying proven ISFM innovations
Eight of the ISFM grantees are being invited to Kenya to work with ASHC in a write-shop to be held at Sopa Lodge in Naivasha from 3 – 7 June 2013.
George Oduor, the ASHC project manager, explains “Over the past year the ASHC team has been working in Ghana perfecting a write-shop technique. We now have a set of simple and intuitive exercises that can really help scientists to think about how to produce targeted farmer-friendly ISFM information materials. The work in the write-shop is just the beginning. We expect the teams to take the approach back to their organizations and continue to produce better communication material devoid of inappropriate jargon.”
Rebbie Harawa, AGRA’s senior program officer, soil health research & extension, added:
“AGRA is pleased to be working closely with the Africa Soil Health Consortium. I have represented AGRA on the steering group for the project from the outset along with my colleagues Bashir Jama and Andre Bationo. Indeed Andre is currently the chair of ASHC.
This involvement has meant that we have been able to watch the development of ASHC and find interesting ways of value added joint initiatives. The latest of these, and perhaps the most ambitious, is a write-shop for eight Soil Health Program grantees.
AGRA places great emphasis on the importance of scale-up and scaling-out of ISFM technologies we have invested in. Our grantees have a collective target of reaching over 4 million smallholders. So we are looking to ASHC to help to our grantees come up with clear messages explaining the impact that ISFM.”
A bank of ‘How to…’ sheets is published on the AHSC website to help organisations with the processes involved in generating and testing extension messages.