MEV-CAM and the power of sharing experiences

The ‘Making Every Voice Count for Adaptive Management’ (MEV-CAM) initiative has kicked off the next part of its training, a series of sessions known as “Case Clinics” and “Peer-to-Peer Sharing Events". These will help trainees share the knowledge captured from the ground, learn from others’ experiences and consequently upscale practices with a better understanding of the possible constraints they may face.

These sessions are key steps between Module A (on Participatory Video and Most Significant Change), Module B (on Participatory Video Facilitation) and the upcoming modules which are focused on editing skills development and the Training of Trainers.

Resulting from the Case Clinics

During the Case Clinic sessions, trainees who have gone to the field have the floor to share their struggles while including such a new approach into their work and can find support in others facing the same issues, whilst trying to find the best ways to tackle these issues together.

One trainee said of the event: “This reminds me that I am not alone and that it is a learning-while-doing process”, which “is characterized by its variability and its sensibility to the response from the communities they are working with”. Participatory Videos are not meant to be perfect but are meant to be real, showing a clear view of what is happening on the ground and sharing the perspectives and opinions of the beneficiaries. It is not meant to be a documentary of the project’s progress, but a knowledge experience process involving local communities facing the same challenges.

Heartfelt reflections have also been shared with the group, such as one coming from a trainee from Mozambique with a communications background. “This approach opened my eyes to a different way of gathering information for the ground. It allows the community to actually interact with you and so they don’t feel like a prop for a video but a real part of the process,” they said.

That is the beauty of this approach. As contexts are very different from one another and the experiences can vary greatly for everyone participating, but there is a common ground: the desire to share a message and give the floor to those who are often not given the chance to speak up.

Knowledge sharing

During these sessions we have had the opportunity to hear and learn from the struggles of the teams in Lebanon, Niger, Namibia, Mongolia, Angola, Mozambique, Malawi and Tanzania, and have come up together with many solutions as a group effort to improve future experiences using the Participatory Video approach, which has also improved the synergies between the GEF-6 Resilient Food Systems (RFS) and GEF-7 Dryland Sustainable Landscapes Impact Programme (DSL-IP) projects.

By the end of this month, we will also have Peer-to-Peer Sharing Events to which Project Coordinators will be invited to be present at, as this is a great opportunity to soak into the experiences of those who carried out activities in the field. These events will conclude this phase of the MEVCAM initiative and trainees will present a more complete rundown of their experiences in the field, sharing in better detail the background, the process, practices highlighted by their work, the results of their efforts on the ground, and the messages captured.

Outcomes

Trainees will then work together to create a collective Action Plan centered on how to make Participatory Videos making a permanent tool in the project cycle for the future and reflect on the main lessons learned throughout this process so far – in line with the South-South Triangle Cooperation Program’s approach on knowledge creation and dissemination.

Between the last week of June and the first week of July, we will start Module C. This Module consists of a session to deepen their knowledge in video-editing to bring out the best output from their footage. We cannot wait to share their final videos!