Interesting posts from everyone! To add on to the discussions, I believe producer organizations should focus on two areas: 

1. Capacity development and learning - Producer organizations must invest in training and capacity development of their stakeholders and partners to learn how to use ICT as a tool. Capacity development and learning can be in three levels: Technical experts training community stakeholders and partners, community stakeholders and partners training fellow members, and community stakeholders and partners training those outside of their community. Through these three-level initiative, capacity development and learning initiatives are scaled up and people within and outside the community benefit from it.   

2. Knowledge management - Producer organizations must also invest in processes and mechanisms that promote and/or enhance the five key processes of knowledge management: knowledge identification, knowledge creation, knowledge capture and storage, knowledge sharing, and knowledge use/application. Investments in the creation of venues for storytelling or devising simple ways of records storage and management can go a long way in preserving knowledge, enabling people to learn from it and using it in their everyday lives, and most importantly sustaining initiatives. 

Hi, just wanted to share a project brief I came across which highlights the experiences of Advancing Capacity to Support Climate Change Adaptation (ACCA) project in communicating climate risks from 10 pilots in Africa and 5 pilots in Asia. The project aims to address the need to develop appropriate risk communication strategies that can support the decision-making processes of stakeholders for climate change adaptation. The experiences identified the importance of determining local context for decision making prior to identifying information needs and designing appropriate communication strategies, promoting social learning between project staff and stakeholders, maintaining continuous dialogues between policy makers and local communities, sustaining active interaction and learning-by-doing to foster comprehension, and communicating clear and relevant climate adaptation messages.

The cases presented in the brief showed that some communication tools were found effective in communicating climate adaptation risks in specific countries. In the Philippines, for example, the use of posters, project magazines, newspaper articles, tv and radio broadcasts, peer-reviewed articles, group discussions, and videos were found effective in communicating key messages on climate change and creating positive effects both at the local and national levels. (http://start.org/download/publications/accca09-web.pdf)

Hi Everyone! Reading through the posts and the cases presented, ICT is still a tool, a means to an end, an effective way of connecting people, enabling them to work together to help address or resolve problems, and of course be updated of what's happening outside their community.

One case that I can share is the experience of the Panglima Laot, a network of local fisher associations, in Aceh, Indonesia. When Aceh was struck by a tsunami in 2004, fishers became unaware of what areas became hazardous and areas where it's safe for them to fish. Through an ADB-assisted project, the fishers were trained in using GPS. By combining the GPS results with their local knowledge, they were able to generate updated navigational maps. The maps identified 3 previously unmapped areas, 4 unmapped geological faults, and several unknown coral areas. The updated maps made their fishing more accurate, prevented damage to their nets, saved fuel by going directly to the fishing grounds, and saved lives when in one incident, the captain and his crew were able to radio their positions during an emergency and the rescuers got to know their exact position from the updated navigational maps:  http://www.adb.org/sites/default/files/pub/2009/Mapping-the-Sea.pdf

ICT is indeed a powerful tool, but the power really lies on how people's capacities are enhanced and how they are able to use this tool to improve their lives.