Dear all, Great point Sameera! But how can we encourage people to openly share the this information and create incentives and spaces for this sort of learning to take place? Key to this issue is the role of donor funding which makes evidence of success a prerequisite to future funding. This also traps commuication iniatives within funding cycles which makes it very difficult to assess the long term impact of projects. As this forum has discussed developing effective communication through value chain structures needs time to build trust and capacity amongst the actors involved. That is why we have so many case studies and so few rigorous evaluations of the longer term impact of this type of work. I would like to add to this the importance of sharing the methodologies that have led to the good and bad practices. Too often case studies focus on the results with not enough attention dedicated to sharing the process through which these results were achieved. I would also like to echo Sameeras' point about the need for platforms to share this knowledge. I spent several years working on a communication project to develop an internet platform to promote knowledge sharing in the bolivian agricultural sector. We developed a series of methodologies to train a range of actors - producers, extension agents, university lecturers, NGO and ministry staff - to develop content based upon their experiences. The funding for this project was cut after the pilot - so in some respects this may be viewed as an 'unsuccessful' project. However the whole process was well documented and elements of it could be useful to other similar initiatives. How can we create a space for these lessons to allow us to learn from and build upon each other's work? [quote="sameera"] Hi All Michael - do not insult Lisa :lol: Good practices/models/case studies It is always good to share the learning with others. Good practices, effective working models, successful case studies. But, it is more important to share the failures, ineffective models, unsuccessful case studies as well, because repetition of those mistakes is extremely costly and will not help us to achieve the development objectives. Most of the initiatives try to hide the negative aspects and sometime exaggerate about success just to please the governments, funding organizations, etc. So we need more and more independent reviews and also platforms such as e-agriculture to share that knowledge with other stakeholders. -Sameera [/quote]