Foro Global sobre Seguridad Alimentaria y Nutrición (Foro FSN)

Dear Justin,

at the FAO e-learning centre we are using Moodle as a open-source, therefore it is an affordable learning management system. Moodle is a user-friendly platform where you can either deliver self-pace e-learning, as well as collaborative learning, supported by tutors.

Both this type of platform and the knowledge sharing platform could be used to carry out a learning needs assessment, to better understand what are the learning gaps and which of these gaps could be addressed by an e-learning programme. Indeed, the dynamic nature of this kind of platforms could also contribute to keeping the learning materials "alive" and up to date.

Best,

Fabiana

Dear Beatrice

Many thanks for your contribution. Integrating distance learning/ materials in the knowledge sharing platforms will be a good thing. It will allow the target audience to continuously upgrade their knowledge.

Do you have any end user-based platforms/technologies in mind on which the platform could deliver the learning materials to ensure that these are easily available, accessible and used by the end users?

We hope to hear from you or from any member of the Forum.

Justin Chisenga

How can we avoid duplication efforts and create a living, innovative and action-oriented platform?

Example of how Food Security Cluster (FSC) functions is a good one to answer this question. FSC is established to coordinate the food security response during a humanitarian crisis, addressing issues of food availability, access and utilization. It is co-led by FAO and WFP, and the Global Support Team includes FAO, WFP, several international NGOs and Red Cross and Red Crescent members. FSC works in around 36 countries affected by sudden onset and protracted crises. The cluster always serves as a platform for information sharing among partners, proper coordination of humanitarian responses, discussion on emerging issues related to food security, and information management. FSC has a well versed IM team in Rome that provides the required IM support to countries on data and information management and mapping. These works and capacities largely help complement the partners' effort and avoid overlaps or duplication. Some of the countries where clusters are not activated as per IASC protocols, e.g., some Pacific Island countries, Nigeria, etc., FSC functions as sector and coordinates preparedness, monitoring (e.g, El Nino monitoring in the Pacific region) and response in close collaboration with the Government counterparts and other partners. The cluster serves as a neutral platform for coordinating action avoiding any duplication or overlaps. FSC at global level also facilitates several thematic Working Groups, normally chaired and co-chaired by NGO partners, including the Preparedness and Resilience Working Group (CRS and WHH currently co-chair the WG) that help streamline agencies works and develop relevant products and guidelines. The WG aims to guide and support cluster partners on necessary preparedness and resilience building through the Humanitarian Programme Cycle (HPC).

The platform FSC offers therefore is always dynamic and innovative providing opportunities for partners to also share their ideas, products and good practices. This platform could be well utilized by the partners working on resilience building in food security sector. In the countries where the cluster/sector is not existing, a similar platform could be established led by the relevant Government line ministry (e.g., Ministry of Agriculture) and co-led by FAO/WFP.

How can we build effective synergies with existing initiatives? Which ones? How to link to NGOs, Academia, other UN, international and regional organizations, as well as national governments?

Effective coordination is only possible through close cooperation with partner organizations. FSC has established strong partnership with nearly 40 UN agencies, I/NGOs, academia and donors. FSC also provides necessary guidance at the country level that supports a broad base and timely response in close coordination with the cluster partners. On average, FSC coordinates with around 60 partners at national level. The FSC also works with national and regional cluster systems in both sudden onset disasters and protracted crises. The Preparedness and Resilience WG constitutes both UN agencies and NGO partners, which is at the moment trying to develop a position paper to guide the cluster coordinators in preparedness and resilience building in disaster prone countries or in different contexts and scenarios (i.e., protracted crises, sudden onset and slow onset disasters), determining the different entry and exit points of the country Clusters through the HPC, including linkages to agriculture-based livelihoods, urban livelihoods and early recovery activities in food security). Having the Government leading the cluster coordination in many countries, food security cluster is a perfect platform to synergize the resilience building initiatives in a very participatory and collaborative manner.

How can we ensure that the platform will not be an information aggregate platform only but an information and service provider? With what content, what types of products? What services? What level of interactivity?

FSC manages information by producing 3Ws/4Ws/5Ws matrices (Who? What? Where? When? for Whom?) and relevant maps using GIS. FSC has strong IM team, which works very closely with WFP VAM team, and other IM teams of the partner institutions, in particular OCHA.

Over the last few months, FSC has also initiated a dialogue with Early Recovery Cluster led by UNDP at HQ level to demystify some of the confusions occurring at country level, and this dialogue is continuing. A guidance note prepared on Early Recovery Interventions and Best Practices in food security sector brought further clarity on the scope and nature of the early recovery works the cluster partners can pursue without duplicating or overlapping with the works carried under the umbrella of Early Recovery Cluster.

Gender and Accountability to Affected Population (AAP) lies at the nucleus of FSC's works and gFSC provides continuous support to the country level clusters on increasing awareness and understanding of the benefits of mainstreaming gender, age, diversity and AAP in response and recovery works. A guidance note for Mainstreaming AAP and Core People-Related Issues in the Humanitarian Programme Cycle through the Cluster System, jointly developed by gFSC and Global Nutrition Cluster was considered as a high quality product the two cluster jointly produced.

With the proven track record, FSC can be very instrumental in producing and disseminating high quality products in close interaction and collaboration with the partners on resilience building.

How about 'learning': Should we include capacity development and

learning material and activities? How and which ones?

Being one of the major current themes among various humanitarian and development partners, the specific elements of resilience building in food security sector needs to be brought to the ground reality for which people need to be well trained. The elements of resilience, mainstreamed at corporate level by agencies such as FAO, UNDP and few donors and elegantly packed in form of strategic objectives, outcomes and indicators, need to be properly unpacked and applied at the field level. In order to do so, the 'frontline soldiers' working on resilience building at the field level need to understand what it means for them, for the host Government and the very people who have to reap the eventual benefits. 

For gFSC, cluster coordination is to ensure that international responses to both sudden onset and protracted crises are clearly led and accountable, aiming to make the international community a better partner for the affected people. This requires additional expertise, and FSC always strives for building  capacity of the Cluster Coordinators that are deployed at national and sub-national level. gFSC has developed different training modules in English and French, based on simulation based techniques, and these are perceived as very effective for training the field people. In addition, gFSC also has a pool of experts with decades of strong field experience. Similarly, FSC regularly conducts training for the Information Management Officers. Our strong focus on capacity building and maintaining a roster of Cluster Coordinators and Information Officers has really helped us become quick and efficient to address the requests coming from the field by deploying best people in a very short period of time. Based on this experience, we can advise the resilience team to put a strong focus on preparing a pool of resilience experts and build their capacity.

Dear all,

Thank you for the interesting initiative and the stimulating debate.

I am currently one of the members of the FAO – Resilience Analysis and Policies (RAP) team and I previously worked for the FOODSECURE research project in the Department of Economics - Roma Tre University.

I believe that two initiatives may be useful for building synergies between universities, UN organizations and other partners working on resilience.

It would be interesting to develop sections by country in the platform, where partners from different institutions may easily share information and materials about their researches and projects on resilience by country. The participation of partners living and working in the country would be a strong asset.

In terms of learning material and activities, uploading in the platform videos of conferences and workshops on resilience would be highly useful for linking colleagues and interested people around the world.  

Best,

Rebecca Pietrelli

Dear all,

Thank you for this interesting initiative.

In response to the question on learning opportunities: as part of the FAO e-learning team (www.fao.org/elearning), I see a good opportunity to integrate elements of distance learning on the knowledge sharing platform. Taking into account the diversity of the perspective users of the platform – for example, in terms of background, knowledge, languages – including e-learning materials would allow the building of a common knowledge base.

e-Learning materials could also address the needs of middle-level policy makers, technical experts on resilience measurement and analysis, as well as potential trainers and extension staff working with people in remote areas.

Kind regards,

Beatrice

[English version below]

Bonjour à tous,

Pour que le portail ne fasse pas doublon avec les autres, il dans un premier temps, identifier les portails déjà existants dans ce domaine, ensuite dresser une liste des évènements, des faits ou tout autre chose pouvant entrainer la résilience. il faut également impliquer fortement les exploitants agricoles, les fermiers, les éleveurs, les agriculteurs, les chercheurs les techniciens d'appui au développement.

Boniface

Good day everyone!

So that the portal does not duplicate others, it is necessary to identify the portals already existing in this area and then draw up a list of events or facts or any other thing that could bring about resilience. It is equally necessary to deeply involve farmers, breeders, farm operators, researchers and technicians supporting development.

Boniface

Dear,

The concept of resilience is of prime importance when the magnitude of a disturbance implies that a return to the preliminary environmental state will increase the functioning of the system and its environmental functions.

In terrestrial environments, Soil is an interface between the lithosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere and atmosphere where the bio-physico-chemical processes occurring will strongly govern the biogeochemical cycles of elements at the global scales. Soil is by its very nature integrated in terms of components and mechanisms. In this regard, sharing knowledge about factors and processes (natural and anthropic) that will influence the evolution of soil properties in the landscape is of utmost importance to get an integrated understanding of the ecosystem functioning of the natural environments.

Soil resilience is defined as the intrinsic ability of a soil to recover from degradation and return to a new equilibrium similar to the antecedent state, to recover its functional and structural integrity (Blanco and Lal, 2010; Principles of Soil Conservation and Management). The environmental factors controlling soil resilience are the factors that control the soil-forming processes: rock, vegetation, climate, topography, time and human influence. We therefore welcome initiative sharing knowledge for an integrated understanding of soil-forming processes that control their properties and, in fine, their functions. In this regard, an initiative such as the Earth’s Critical Zone Observatories (http://criticalzone.org/national/) can augur a promising future in terms of inter-disciplinary research and knowledge sharing about how  bio-physico-chemical processes, and their interactions, affect the evolution of soil systems.

Cheers

Jean-Thomas

Dear colleagues:

As mentioned by several respondents, the Food Security Information Network’s Resilience Measurement Technical Working Group is a good example of how to build and share knowledge on resilience among different stakeholders. The RM-TWG’s publications on principles and a conceptual model for measuring resilience have been instrumental in guiding regional and country-level practitioners; four additional resilience Technical Papers were recently published on Household Data Sources; Qualitative Data and Subjective Indicators; Measuring Shocks and Stressors and Systems Analysis (see http://www.fsincop.net/topics/resilience-measurement/outupts/en/). These products have already been used to inform resilience measurement approaches by NGOs, FAO, WFP and IFAD, and over 780 FSIN members have signed up for the Resilience Measurement Community of Practice. It will be important to build on these achievements using the FSIN (which is governed by a multi-agency steering committee) as a “neutral broker”.

Some comments/for your consideration:

First, FSIN is exploring the use of more interactive features to better engage with our COP members, but given the heavy demands on field practitioners, it is challenging to get them to share their experiences and questions. One option we have identified, is to establish a roster of independent, external experts to respond to technical requests from the field. 

Second, since one of the aims of the Knowledge Platform is to aggregate information on resilience, how is this information different from, or related to, the information found on existing food security, nutrition or natural resource management platforms? 

Finally, in order to build effective synergies with existing initiatives, a participatory mapping of these initiatives would be welcome. This could be followed by a meeting with key stakeholders at which a more fleshed out proposal for the Platform is discussed. 

Thank you,

Alexis Hoskins

Currently, I am working with the AVRDC - World Vegetable Center as a Capacity Development Specialist. I Served IGAD as Technical Coordinator to the Resilience Analysis Unit and as a Coordinator of Knowledge Management, which provides a background to my contribution below.

I appreciate the proactive and consistent actions taken by the FAO Team to create space for knowledge sharing on relevant topics.

Returning to theme of discussion 2, I vote for the idea of creating an order to the influx of information from various sources. Following the comments from my colleagues in IGAD, we need to align the global knowledge management, such as the one proposed here, with the regional, national level and the sub-national levels. If I got it right, issues mentioned earlier about scale speak to this level of operations.

The other issue about strengthening resilience is who uses what knowledge at which level? For instance, how can pastoralist, farmers and fishermen and women get access to information that is available in digital forms? Moreover, knowledge sharing is not sufficient to bring resilience capacities because knowledge management is about integration of knowledge generation, capture, sharing and utilization.

Hence, one has to think of the nature of knowledge itself (its relevance for who). This is best approached when we integrate and share what we do from planning, M&E to impact assessment. Making effort on sharing knowledge alone will not help much in resilience agenda, even though we need to organize ourselves better in knowledge sharing.

Knowledge management is one of the essential components of capacity development at individual, group, organizational and systems levels. Therefore, we need to integrate knowledge management with capacity development framework to achieve strategic goals at scale. In this regards, I wish to indicate the IGAD’s initiative together with its partners (FAO, WFP, UNICEF, UNDP, and UNOCHA) in strengthening the analytical capacity of middle level policy-makers and technical experts on resilience measurement and analysis. This work is in progress by the IGAD Resilience Analysis Unit.

Thank you for the opportunity.

Tesfaye Beshah, PhD

Capacity Development Specialist

AVRDC - The World Vegetable Center

Allow me bounce back into the discussion to share a few thoughts on setting the scene for an integrated knowledge sharing platform.

I recognize quite a lot has been mentioned about the need to avoid duplication  - but this time I would like to pick-up on the point of creating a living, innovative and action oriented platform. I recall in my last submission, I mentioned something about the challenge of maintaining a vibrant momentum in the platforms especially when membership is largely based on a voluntary basis.

I asked myself what incentives would keep a platform action-oriented. Tim pointed out an important issue on the increasing demand by NGOs, governments and other implementing agencies on the good practices that lead to real improved resilience. For as long as such a platform can provide valuable & visible benefits/services to its clients, the demand will be available and this would consequently keep the platforms action-oriented. I also think that by recognizing outstanding contributions of institutions & personalities including specific products and services generated through these platforms, this would significantly keep the fire burning.

A few additional thoughts on how a platform can be an information and a service provider:

• 1- Clearly identify the knowledge management initiatives in a target area;
• 2- Clearly identify what knowledge management products and services are most needed (and, therefore, most highly valued) by high-priority, clients, e.t.c;
• 3- Clearly identify which of these key knowledge management products and 4- services are already satisfactorily provided by others in the target area;
• 5- Clearly identify which of the gaps of the remaining key knowledge management products and services are in area where the platform can contribute significantly

Thank you