Shayamal Saha: July 2011

I am very happy to share that recently I have been awarded a Tao Associate Grant ( TAG) project . The Taos institute ( www.taosinstitute.net) has awarded me as small grant project on following

Project

The development of tools for the promotion of self-help among farmers adapting to climate change in Bangladesh, using social constructionist and appreciative inquiry resources

Duration of the project

12 months (May, 2011 –April, 2012)

Location of the project

Patikabari village of Bhadurpur Union of Pangsa Thana under Rajbari District of Bangladesh

Collaborative partner organization and contact person

Voluntary Organization for Rural Development (VORD)

Village & Post: Habashpur

Thana: Pangsa, District: Rajbari

Bangladesh

Email: vord_org@yahoo.com

Background and objectives

Extreme events of climate change affect the livelihoods of communities that depend on agriculture. Talks concerning climate change, its effects on agriculture and ways to adapt are largely dominated by the thoughts of external scholars and professionals; rarely do experts pay attention to the ways that farmers themselves address these significant problems, nor do these professional people work together with farmers to improve their responses to climate changes. Yet, relational interactions of farmers, their agriculture, and climate variability continuously generate learning and innovations of adaptation ; how farmers develop adaptive measures can be seen as one of the life giving forces to climate change. However, traditions of problem solving and professional domination in development and social change arenas usually do not encourage the promotion of horizontal sharing of knowledge and innovation through creating enabling knowledge sharing infrastructure; the subject-object structure of transferring professionals’ thoughts to the farmers often does not match the diverse local situations farmers find themselves in.

Integrating the principles of Social/Relational Construction and the 4-D cycle of AI offers us the potential and possibility to promote self-help means towards climate change adaptation in agriculture among these people.

The main purposes of this project are to:

Pilot an AI cycle in a rural ( agri-livelihood based) community of Bangladesh in order to promote local innovations and actions affecting climate change adaptation in agriculture;
Develop a contextualized AI facilitation tools (useful for grassroots change workers) in order to facilitate farmers’ community in order to promote self-help with regard to climate change adaptation in their agriculture.

Expected outcomes:

· vVORD will have a community level project of AI for the promotion of local innovations and actions towards climate change adaptation in agriculture.

· VORD as a local NGO in Bangladesh will develop its capacity to facilitate AI for the promotion of local innovations and actions towards climate change adaptation in agriculture

· Experiential learning will be packaged in the form of facilitating tools to be shared by others involved in this pursuit.

· What did we do up yet?

J June 15- July 15 , 2011: June 17 : On June 17, 2011 I traveled from manila to Dhaka. At the first I contacted Dr. Majed , Chairperson of VORD and shared with him the project . About 10 days I did some networks with Several NGOs, consulting firm and academe and talked with them individually about the concept of SC-RC and the research project. while Dhaka , I did not want to spend my project my unnecessarily staying in Hotel thus I stayed in a NGO guest house namely Institute of Environment and Development . July 1, 2011, I went VORD project field and stayed their up to July 8. During these 8 days I have done following activities:

Project sharing meeting with the VORD executive committee members and senior staff members.
Facilitating a dialogue session with few local NGO members on social-relational construction , application of AI in promotion of self-help in development and social chnage
Orientation to the selected VORD staff on Appreciative Inquiry and preparation of action plan for VORD staff ( this orientation included discussions and field visit with Patikabari village farmers community members)
I traveled from Habashpur village ( Location of VORD office) to Dhaka on July 8
On July 9 I had a dialogue and presentation on AI and social-Relational construction on Change work this event took place in Ambrosia Guest house in Dhanmoni, Dhaka this meting was participated by about 15 persons representing NGO executives , university teachers, free lance development consultants. In this meeting i shared my power point which I presented in the 1st asian AI summit; held in Manila , Philippines . This event was organized in collaboration with Appreciative Consultancy Services International Bangladesh ( www.acsibd.com) . All meeting participants liked the AI and social-relational construction concepts in development work.

Output created thought this first mission

Though discussions with VORD staff we have decided to apply following tools for next few months ( July to September) which will be utilized by assigned VORD staff : Step 1: Listening to the farmers : This activity will be conducted by VORD staff during July- August 2011. The listening activity will be conducted on following learning questions :

What kind of climate variable changes perceived by the community?
What kind of seasonal changes perceived by the Farmer community ?
What farmers are doing to adapt ?

For learning and creating dialoguing with wider community members of Patikabri though dialogue and discussions with VORD staff we have thought of following tools to be applied :

Time line climate variability change
Tim line seasonal variations
Time line seasonal variation of cropping
Informal dialogue on farmers adaption and identification

During July and August, 2011 VORD staff plan to apply these tools and document tools and storing of facilitating. Step 2: Village level story telling session of farmers adaptation of climate change session . Through dialogue and discussions with VORD staff and farmers of Patikabri farmers community we have though of following story questions:

Story question

· Tell a story about someone doing agriculture without using any chemical fertilizer and pesticide?

· Tell a story about someone doing agriculture with little chemical fertilizer and pesticide but largely using organic fertilizer and pesticide?

· Tell a story about a farmer and his farming who was able to reduce cost of farming

· Tell a story of a farmer who was able to control pest using organic pest control method

· Tell a story of a farmer who was able to improve fertility of land using organic fertilization

· Tell a story of a farmer who was able to protect crop and vegetable

· Tell a story of a farmer who was able to sow and germinate seeds successfully

· Tell a story of a farmer who was able to reduce crops harvest lose

· Tell story of of farmers ‘collective and cooperative actions for better agriculture .

Meeting i did with NGo executives has committed that they will try to apply AI in their staff management as a test .

What next

I next i plan to work with VORD either last part of September or beginning of October to have participatory reflection and documentation of experiences, and plan for next steeps with VORD.