FFS platform partners' network
This page includes the profiles of platform partners. Partners are actors strongly involved in Field School or related approaches globally. If you are an institution interested in joining the partners' network please email [email protected]
Action Against Hunger (ACF)
Action Against Hunger has a long history of implementing the Farmer Field School (FFS) approach across different contexts. Beginning in Uganda in 2008, and later in South Sudan, FFS projects demonstrated strong results in improving production practices, transferring agronomic knowledge (land preparation, seed selection, planting, weeding, pest control), diversifying household food and income sources, and strengthening resilience to livelihood shocks.
Building on this foundation, Action Against Hunger continues to apply and scale the FFS approach. Since 2019, under the EUTF RISE Project in Uganda, more than 150 FFS have been established with nearly 6,000 farmers, including refugees and host communities. These schools have improved crop production, expanded access to livestock and tools (e.g., ox ploughs, goats, improved seed varieties), and fostered knowledge-sharing networks that ripple across communities. Evidence shows that the approach not only strengthens food security and nutrition, but also promotes self-reliance, social cohesion, and sustainable livelihoods.
AAH remains committed to promoting FFS, especially in contexts heavily affected by climate change and resource constraints, as part of its mission to fight hunger and build resilient communities.
Contact: Alfred Ejem
Access Agriculture
Access Agriculture is an international non-profit organisation working across the Global South, with headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, and regional offices in Kenya, Benin, Bangladesh, and Bolivia. Access Agriculture has developed a unique approach that merges farmer knowledge with scientific knowledge, embedding the FFS principle of discovery-based learning to support South–South farmer-to-farmer learning through video. Working closely with FFS groups and experienced farmers, the organisation produces new training videos through its network of trained local partners.
Contact: Paul Van Mele
Its open-access video platform hosts the world’s largest collection of broadcast-quality training videos on agroecology and rural entrepreneurship, available in more than 80 international and local languages. The platform is accessible in English, French, Spanish, and Bangla, with Hindi and Arabic soon to follow.
As a world-leading scaling organisation, Access Agriculture strengthens the capacity of development organisations, extension services, universities, TV and rural radio stations, and farmer organisations in their outreach activities. More than 3,000 organisations in over 130 countries have already used Access Agriculture videos for training farmers, both within FFS and through other community interventions.
Through its Young Entrepreneur Challenge Fund, Access Agriculture supports youth to develop businesses around video dissemination, enabling large groups of farmers to access knowledge. These young entrepreneurs help broaden the impact of FFS and other initiatives. To date, Access Agriculture has reached over 90 million people in rural areas of Africa, Asia, and Latin America through multiple distribution channels.
Together, Farmer Field Schools and Access Agriculture create powerful synergies for inclusive knowledge sharing, farmer empowerment, and scaling of agroecological practices worldwide.
AFAAS
The African Forum for Agricultural Advisory Services (AFAAS) is a continental body that brings together National Agricultural Extension and Advisory Services (AEAS) stakeholders under one umbrella. Its goal is to enhance the use of improved knowledge and innovations by agricultural value chain actors, thereby improving productivity and contributing to individual and national development objectives.
Guided by its 2018–2027 strategy, AFAAS focuses on three main pillars:
- Strengthening and expanding networks and knowledge management capacities.
- Building capacities for scaling out technologies and innovations.
- Facilitating the advancement of AEAS.
AFAAS currently hosts the Eastern Africa Field Schools (FS) Hub, which plays a pivotal role in supporting the institutionalization and quality assurance of the Field School approach across the region. While many countries have integrated Field Schools into government extension services and institutions of higher learning, coordinated field support has often been limited. The FS Hub provides a platform for institutionalization, networking, and technical oversight to ensure the quality of FS implementation.
The vision of the FS Hub is to see “farmers and agro-pastoralists transforming their livelihoods”, and its mission is to serve as “a leading regional center of excellence for quality FS implementation in Eastern Africa.”
With the support of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and other partners, AFAAS facilitates networking and technical support for FS initiatives in 11 countries: Burundi, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda.
Contact: Max Olupot
Agence Nationale de l'Aviation Civile et de la Météorologie (ANACIM)
Faced with climate variability, ANACIM has been engaged since 2007, through several projects, in setting up both experimental and extension mechanisms (in the form of experimental fields) in certain localities (Fatick, Diourbel, Kaffrine, Sédhiou, Ziguinchor, Kolda). The aim is, on the one hand, to enable producers to understand the importance of integrating meteorological and climatological information into their production processes, and on the other hand, to teach them methodologies for incorporating this information into their production systems.
These mechanisms follow the same philosophy as Farmer Field Schools. Thus, within the framework of the FAO Climate Resilience Project, we will integrate this technique into the technological package of existing Farmer Field Schools. The capitalization of all these efforts will allow us to improve our existing systems. .
Contact: Oumar Konté
Association of African Cotton Producers (AProCA)
Faced with the crisis affecting African cotton sectors since 2001, African cotton producers mobilized to defend their interests on the international stage. In December 2004, cotton producers from 12 West and Central African countries met in Cotonou and created the Association of African Cotton Producers (AProCA), with the following objectives:
- Represent African cotton producers and defend their interests at regional and international levels;
- Support national platforms in carrying out this work of representation and advocacy at the national level;
- Promote the improvement of the productivity and quality of African cotton and associated crops in order to maintain competitiveness.
Today, the Association has 15 member countries: Benin, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Senegal, Chad, Togo, Zambia, and Uganda. The Association’s headquarters (Permanent Secretariat) is based in Bamako, Mali.
Integrated Production and Pest Management (IPPM), introduced by FAO, promotes healthy and sustainable agriculture, with Farmer Field Schools (FFS) as its key tool. It has produced tangible results in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Senegal through a FAO-led pilot phase.
To contribute to the promotion of good agricultural practices, enabling producers to maximize their profits while protecting the environment, AProCA implemented the project “Diffusion of Integrated Production and Pest Management (IPPM)”, with financial support from the European Union and technical assistance from FAO.
Given the results obtained through the project and the strong interest of cotton producers in IPPM, AProCA intends to consolidate the achievements of FFS in Benin and Togo, and extend the IPPM/FFS approach to its other member countries.
Contact : Youssouf djimé Sidibe
Agronomists and Veterinarians Without Borders (AVSF)
Agronomists and Veterinarians Without Borders (AVSF) is an international solidarity association, recognized as serving the public interest, that has been working since 1977 to support smallholder farming. AVSF supports farmer through actions focused on the management of agro-ecosystems, community learning, and development. Through Farmer Field Schools (FFS), AVSF seeks to provide farmers with opportunities to play an active role in promising value chains.
AVSF’s actions aim to improve farmers’ incomes by developing production and marketing systems based on the principles of farmer participation and the valorization of their know-how. In this way, AVSF implements projects with a strong emphasis on farmer-centered learning.
An example is the project “Combating Desertification through Support to Pastoralism” implemented in Senegal, where market gardeners are supported in comparative experimentation of digestate versus other fertilizers. Farmers themselves test and identify sustainable practices, compare yields, and conduct their own agro-economic assessments, with technical support from AVSF. As a result, conclusions come directly from the producers, who naturally take ownership and spread good practices.
The same approach is applied in poultry farming and dairy stables, which serve as learning and exchange workshops. AVSF is therefore strongly committed to promoting the Farmer Field School approach.
Contact : Katia Roesch
Bioversity International
Bioversity International is the operating name of the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute (IPGRI) and a member of the CGIAR Consortium. Bioversity is a global research-for-development organization that delivers scientific evidence, management practices and policy options to use and safeguard agricultural and tree biodiversity to attain sustainable global food and nutrition security. Bioversity International works with partners in low-income countries in different regions where agricultural and tree biodiversity can contribute to improved nutrition, resilience, productivity and climate change adaptation.
Contact: Paola De Santis
Bioversity supports the enhancement of equitable linkages and representative partnerships for farmer management of crop genetic (crop varietal diversity) across FFS partners from local to national levels. By introducing the added value and integrating the use of crop varietal diversity or within species diversity into the FFS methodology through Diversity Field Forum (DFF) and Community Bioversity Management (CBM) groups, capacity is built for farmers to analyze and manage their own crop plant genetic resources to increase agricultural productivity and ecosystem resilience in their fields and farms. Diversity Field Forum (DDF) involves the organization of men and women teams (usually 25-30) by gender to assess crop genetic diversity. Farmers groups test both improved and local cultivars taking into account the preferred selection of women and men. Farmers are trained in the multiplication of quality diversity seed of both local and modern selected cultivars, which are then multiplied and disseminated within and outside DFF and FFS groups. Through weekly meetings farmers are also informed about international and national conventions and legislations relevant to exchange of plant genetic resources.
Community Bioversity Management (CBM) is a similar multistep participatory process that focuses specifically on strengthening the local decision-making and governance capacity of communities, rural institutions, and FFS to utilize crop genetic resources. It follows the principals of (1) let local stakeholders lead by empowering farmers and their local institutions, (2) build on local innovations, practice and resources, (3) diversified biodiversity-based livelihood options, and (4) provide a platform for social learning and collective action.
Belgian Development Agency (Enabel)
The Belgian development agency (Enabel) implements the development cooperation programmes of the Belgian government in its 14 partner countries. The agency also works for other donors.
Enabel started in 2009 in Rwanda and in 2014 in Burundi to implement the FFS approach, as part of the agricultural development programmes of the Belgian cooperation. Through these programmes, more than 200,000 Rwandan and 12,000 Burundian farmers are empowered, by building up their observation and analysing skills. The impact is a productivity increase of 45% (worth $100 per family) as well as multiple social benefits. This discovery-based learning process is facilitated by intensively trained farmers called FFS Facilitators. They follow a season-long training focused on technical, facilitation and group-building skills. They spend a total of 60 to 90 days in residential training in various sessions, while working with their first group between training sessions.
The innovation introduced by the Belgian development agency in Rwanda is the service-delivery model: The FFS facilitators are organized in service cooperatives who are hired as professional service providers in order to reach an ever increasing number of farmers. Besides making the extension service much cheaper, these peer trainers also fully understand the local challenges and use the proper language and attitude to achieve behaviour change. The creation of professional proximity service providers makes the approach sustainable, as they can be hired by the Government, NGO’s, Farmer’s Organizations and the private sector.
Contact: Pascale Lepoint (Burundi) & Daniel Binart (Mauritania)
Centre for Agriculture and Biosciences International (CABI)
CABI is an intergovernmental not-for-profit development-led organization that can trace its origins back to 1910. Our mission is to improve people's lives worldwide by providing information and applying scientific expertise to solve problems in agriculture and the environment. Our mission and direction are influenced by government representatives from our 48 member countries who help guide the activities we undertake. These include scientific publishing, development projects and research, and microbial services. We are also leading a major new initiative, Plantwise, which aims to improve food security and the lives of the rural poor by reducing crop losses. We have over 500 staff based in 16 countries and have offices in Brazil, China, Ghana, India, Kenya, Malaysia, Pakistan, Switzerland, Trinidad & Tobago, the UK and the USA.
From mid-nineties to mid-two thousand, CABI was part of the Technical Support Group of the FAO Global IPM Facility. CABI contributed in planning, execution and evaluation of FFS programs in Africa, Caribbean, Asia and Latin America. This was followed by a period of several years where CABI worked with other international and national partners to refine the Farmer Field School approach to IPM training and its adaptation to new cropping systems, its application to testing and validating indigenous pest management knowledge and its role in putting research into use. Recently, CABI has been working towards linking its Plantwise program to FFS activities globally, initially by training FFS facilitators as plant doctors in Rwanda and Mozambique. This was followed by the creation of a National task force in Nepal to prepare and implement modalities for linking Plantwise to FFS activities and oversee joint implementation of identified linkage activities.
Contact: Janny Vos & Martin Kimani
Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere (CARE)
Founded in 1945 with the creation of the CARE Package®, CARE is a leading humanitarian organization fighting global poverty. CARE places special focus on working alongside poor girls and women because, equipped with the proper resources, they have the power to lift whole families and entire communities out of poverty. Our seven decades of experience show that when you empower a girl or woman, she becomes a catalyst, creating ripples of positive change that lift up everyone around her. That’s why girls and women are at the heart of CARE’s community-based efforts to improve education, health and economic opportunity for everyone.
Contacts: Pranati Mohanraj, Maureen Miruka & Emily Janoch
Centre de Suivi Écologique (CSE)
The CSE is a Center of Excellence specialized in space technologies, particularly in the collection, entry, processing, analysis, and dissemination of data and information on the environment and natural resources. Through the “Environmental Monitoring and Food Security” program, the CSE provides support to various government bodies and research institutions on issues such as: vegetation monitoring, pastoral monitoring, agricultural campaign monitoring, bushfire monitoring, characterization and development of management plans for pastoral units, development of climate change adaptation plans, and climate change vulnerability analysis.
The CSE is a partner of FAO in the implementation of the project Integration of climate resilience into agro-pastoral production for food security in vulnerable rural areas through the Farmer Field School approach. The CSE aims to integrate this approach into its projects and programs.
Contact: Amadou Sall & Abdoulaye Faye
From mid-nineties to mid-two thousand, CABI was part of the Technical Support Group of the FAO Global IPM Facility. CABI contributed in planning, execution and evaluation of FFS programs in Africa, Caribbean, Asia and Latin America. This was followed by a period of several years where CABI worked with other international and national partners to refine the Farmer Field School approach to IPM training and its adaptation to new cropping systems, its application to testing and validating indigenous pest management knowledge and its role in putting research into use. Recently, CABI has been working towards linking its Plantwise program to FFS activities globally, initially by training FFS facilitators as plant doctors in Rwanda and Mozambique. This was followed by the creation of a National task force in Nepal to prepare and implement modalities for linking Plantwise to FFS activities and oversee joint implementation of identified linkage activities.
Development in Gardening (DIG)
Development in Gardening (DIG) is an international US non-profit that was founded in 2006 out of a collaborative garden project with the Infectious Disease Ward at Fann National Hospital in Senegal. DIG initially started as an organization supporting facility gardens but adapted our programming based on the expressed needs of PLHIV, young women and other community groups for household support and farmer training. Using a community-led model, DIG enables vulnerable communities to become more resilient, healthy and connected through nutrition-sensitive and climate-smart agriculture.
DIG adopted FAO’s Farmer Field School (FFS) approach in 2010 in Kenya working with HIV support groups. DIG has continued to adopt the approach throughout our programs in Kenya and Uganda to meet farmers’ specific nutritional vulnerabilities and expressed needs. DIG has graduated 2,000+ farmers through the FFS and Farmer Field Business School working in a wide range of geographies and diverse communities. DIG addresses these key impact areas through the FFS approach - climate resilience, food security, nutrition, income generation, and social support.
Contacts: Olivia Nyaidho (Kenya Program Coordinator), Lauren Masey (Uganda Program Coordinator) & Noah Derman (US Contact)
Eastern Africa Field Schools Hub (EA FSH)
AFAAS is currently hosting the Eastern Africa Field Schools (FS) Hub. Whilst, most countries in the region have institutionalized the FS approach in government extension service and institutions of higher learning, it is noted that there is little or no coordinated support in the field to ensure quality FS implementation. Therefore, the role of the EA FSH is very pivotal. The mandate of the FS hub is to provide a platform for the institutionalization and oversight on quality implementation of the FS approach in the region. The FSH vision is to see “Farmers and agro-pastoralists transforming their livelihoods’’. While the mission is to be a leading regional center of excellence for quality FS implementation” in the Eastern Africa Region. AFAAS, with the support of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and other donors, is facilitating FS networking and technical support to FS initiatives in 11 countries namely Burundi, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda.
Contact: Edwin Adenya
FAO E-learning academy
Within the context of the collaboration between Global FFS Platform and the FAO elearning Academy, over 350 multilingual elearning courses, are offered free of charge, as a global public good. The thematic areas covered are Nutrition, sustainable food systems, water management, soils restoration, climate smart agriculture, gender empowerment, responsible management of natural resources among others.
Contact: Cristina Petracchi
One of our key tools to promote agricultural development is the Farmers’ Field and Business Schools (www.care.org/ffbs) where we integrate agriculture, marketing, nutrition, and gender equality as part of a curriculum that focuses on the needs of women farmers. After extensive piloting, CARE is now using the FFBS approach to reach 175,000 farmers in 7 countries and is continuing to scale. Last year CARE worked in 90 countries and reached more than 72 million people around the world.
Farming Integrated Development Association (FIDA)
The Farming Integrated Development Association (FIDA) is a leading not-for-profit organization founded by Farmer Field School (FFS) Practitioners in Pakistan, committed to empowering rural communities through sustainable development initiatives. Our roots trace back to a 2003 EU-backed initiative, the National Integrated Pest Management (Nat-IPM) Programme, spearheaded by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, the Pakistan Agricultural Research Council (PARC) and Plan International Pakistan. This foundational work, particularly the Farmers Training of Facilitators (FToF) program launched in 2005 in district Vehari, South Punjab, Pakistan, catalysed the formal establishment of FIDA in 2006.
FIDA champions participatory approaches, including Farmer Field Schools (FFS), Women Open Schools (WOS), and Children Ecology Clubs (CEC), to foster sustainable livelihoods, enhance nutritional assurance, build climate resilience, and improve market access for smallholder farmers and producers across Pakistan.
FIDA's commitment to holistic development and strong community partnerships has positively impacted over 786,000 beneficiaries. We implement climate-smart and regenerative agriculture practices, promote diverse diets, and integrate climate change mitigation and adaptation measures. Furthermore, FIDA strives to reduce rural poverty, promote gender equality in agriculture, and build community resilience to various shocks.
As a testament to our grassroots-driven change, FIDA is dedicated to paving the way for a brighter and more resilient future for communities throughout Pakistan.
FFS promotion services
FFS Promotion Services (FFS-PS) is a 'company limited by guarantee' started in Kenya in 2006. It was initiated by FFS professionals and trainers who had been involved in the introduction and expansion of the Farmers Field School approach in Africa since 1995.
FFS-PS facilitates stakeholders in the agricultural sector to support innovation and embrace participatory and experiential learning approaches aimed at ensuring food security, sound environmental management and empowerment of local communities.
FFS-PS focuses on facilitation, capacity building, quality enhancement, knowledge sharing and scaling up of people-centered learning approaches among agricultural service providers and stakeholders in Eastern and Southern Africa.
Contact: Godrick Khisa
International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)
The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) is a specialized UN agency dedicated to eradicating rural poverty in developing countries. Its goal is to enable poor rural women and men to improve their food and nutrition security, increase their incomes and strengthen their resilience.
IFAD’s focus on smallholder farmers and rural poverty makes the FFS approach highly adapted to its operations in the field. IFAD’s engagement with FFS dates back to 1999 through grants in support to FFS in Eastern Africa followed by several grants to assess FFS effectiveness and scale them up. Presently, FFS is the approach most commonly used for extension in several of IFAD’s investment programmes globally. This is especially true for the Eastern and Southern Africa, West and Central Africa and Asia and the Pacific regions and to a lesser extent for the Near East and North Africa and Latin America and Caribbean regions.
Contact: Robert Delve
International Potato Center (CIP)
The International Potato Center (CIP) has been a pioneer in the adaptation of the FFS approach for participatory research and training related to potato and sweetpotato. The experience involved countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, where the adaptation was carried out in close collaboration with national research and development organizations. In the case of Peru, the phase of adaptation took place between 1997 and 1999 when CIP and other organizations from Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru received training from FAO. After that there was a replication phase between 2000 and 2004 where other organizations started to use FFS, during this phase CIP collaborated with CARE-Peru; and then a period of institutionalization between 2005 and 2014 when a number of other organizations started to use the method for different topics (crops and livestock).
Contact: Oscar Ortiz & Willy Pradel
Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA)
The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), as the implementing agency for providing Japan’s official development assistance (ODA) in an integrated fashion, carries out international cooperation with developing countries.
JICA has started using the FFS approach to social forestry extension in 2004 in Kenya. Using three core activities, Agro-Eco-System Analysis (AESA), Group Dynamics and Special Topics, the project in Kenya (2004-2009) contributed to both environmental conservation and livelihood enhancement of farmers. Before then, FFS had mostly focused on agriculture, thus the project innovated the approach by adapting it to social forestry, including a combination of agriculture and forestry components, and strategies to raise interest of farmers in forestry fields.
Contact: Emi Teshima & Mari Miura
In the project, directors of district forest offices (DOF) also contributed to the backstopping and quality control of the workshops. This creative model of FFS approach and its experiences have been widely shared to other African countries through third country training sessions since 2014 as a good practice. In total approximately 40 people from 17 countries have participated in the training workshops as of December 2016. The FFS model to social forestry was also used in a sustainable forest conservation project in Ethiopia since 2007 and is currently being used in the ‘Sustainable Natural Resource Management through FFS in the Rift Valley Area of Oromia Region’ project in Ethiopia, started in 2012.
In addition, JICA has also approached using FFS in agriculture projects in Niger and Burkina Faso.
Oxfam Novib
Oxfam Novib is world-wide development organization that mobilizes the power of people against poverty. Around the globe, we work to find practical, innovative ways for people to lift themselves out of poverty and thrive. Oxfam Novib works towards sustainable rural livelihoods, gender and youth inclusion, transparent and accountable finance, conflict transformation and rights in crises and provides humanitarian aid.
Oxfam Novib’s Sowing Diversity equals Harvesting Security (SD=HS) program challenges unequal and unsustainable aspects of seed and food production systems globally in multiple ways. SD=HS is implemented by a unique (in size and global coverage) consortium of eight international organizations: ANDES, CTDT, GRAIN, ETC Group, Third World Network, South Centre, SEARICE and lead by Oxfam Novib. The scope of this consortium enables the program to influence local and global policies and institutions on both access to and sustainable use of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture, in order to achieve food and nutrition security.
Contact: Anita Dohar
SD=HS supports and helps build Farmer Field Schools, where traditional and scientific knowledge is utilized for PGRFA management for climate change adaptation. Farmer Field Schools are tried and tested method where local farmers collectively learn to define problems, seek solutions and set targets. The program has developed self-explanatory Farmer Field School curricula that can be adapted by a wide range of stakeholders within and beyond the scope of the program. For SD=HS, Farmer Field Schools are the entry and exit strategy to move from an anecdotal to a high-impact phase in terms of program results, sustainability, and outreach.
Platform for Agrobiodversity Research (PAR)
The overall goal of the Platform for Agrobiodiversity Research (PAR) is to enhance the sustainable management and use of agricultural biodiversity for meeting human needs by improving knowledge of all its different aspects.
Integrating agrobiodiversity into FFS goes beyond crops. It includes crops, animals, fish and wild plants used by people in agricultural landscapes. It encompasses integrating biodiversity in the wider agro-ecosystem and provides important ecosystem services.
Contact: Devra Jarvis
Under the principals that agrobiodiversity is not just ”out there” but is a result of the continuously changing relationship between farmers, pastoralists, forest dwellers, fishers and their natural environment; PAR supports the FFS Global agenda through:
- its development of an adequate agrobiodiversity knowledge base through collating, synthesizing and disseminating agrobiodiversity knowledge, making available the relevant tools and practices that support improved use of agrobiodiversity, and identifying areas where information is lacking and new knowledge is needed including in FFS;
- through identifying ways in which agrobiodiversity can contribute to addressing some of the major global challenges faced today (e.g. environmental degradation, poverty alleviation, climate change, water quality and scarcity, and new global disease threats) by making available the information and options that ensure the contribution of agrobiodiversity in FFS; and through
- facilitating relevant new and innovative research partnerships, that strengthen multidisciplinary and participatory agrobiodiversity research, and involve work on different agro-ecosystem components (such as livestock, crops, soils, pollinators, etc.) and contribute to building agrobiodiversity research capacity, particularly in the developing regions.
PAR has carried out evaluations of the diversity of crop and livestock enterprises among agro-biodiversity and non agro-biodiversity farmer field schools (ABD-FFS).
Practical Action
Practical Action is an International Development organization established in 1966 with the objective of reducing poverty through wider use of appropriate technologies in developing countries. With the Head Office in the UK, Practical Action works through its Country and Regional Offices in Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Kenya, Sudan, Zimbabwe and Peru.
Across the different countries, Practical Action works in (1) Access to energy (2) Agriculture, Markets and Food security (3) Urban Water, Sanitation and Waste and (4) Disaster Risk Reduction. In addition to these, Climate Change, Making markets work for the poor and Practical Answers to Poverty are considered as cross cutting sectors. We also mainstream gender across all our programmatic works. The main objective of the organization is to change the people’s life through adopting and using technologies, sharing knowledge and influencing for impact at scale.
Focal persons:
- Menila Kharel Programme Coordinator, Agriculture, food security and Markets, Nepal
- Afsari Begum Programme Manager, Bangladesh
- Melody Makumbe Project Manager, Sustainable Agriculture and Livelihoods, Zimbabawe
- Jose Tirabanti Project Manager, Livelihoods and Markets, Peru
Brief description of our work
Across the different offices, we have been implementing FFS (Farmer Field School), Climate Field School (CFS), promotion of climate resilient varieties, women friendly technologies, Early Warning System (EWS) and climate adaptive practices to improve livelihood and build the resilience of farming community. We closely work with community, government, stakeholders and private sectors in all our areas of work.
Below are the key highlights of our work:
- FFS in vegetable, fruits, grains, cacao and in seed production of small grains (cowpeas, sorghum, pearl millet, bambarra nuts),
- CFS in three sub-sectors: vegetable, spices and goat to enable farmers to understand the climate change impacts in these sub-sectors and discuss the local solutions and adopt the climate resilient varieties and adaptive practices
- EWS to help communities save their lives from natural disasters like flood through hydrology station and SMS alerts
- Weather information and agro-advisory services to help communities make informed decision to undertake agriculture practices
- ICT based call centre to respond to farmer’s queries
- Pumpkin cultivation in Char
Society of Facilitators and Trainers (SOFT)
Under the initiative of Dr Iftikhar Ahmad (late), SOFT came in to being a private sector custodian of FFS learning system professional facilitators working across Pakistan. SOFT is a not for profit society created in 2009, after a 10 years of implementation of FFS-based IPM from the platform of National IPM Programme of PARC (Pakistan Agricultural Research Council) assisted by FAO and related agencies in Pakistan. It was created by a group of professionals with a mission to empower people through developing capacities of individuals, groups and institutions to pursue sustainable and peaceful livelihood development through FFS learning system without compromising their freedom and quality of life.
Contact: [email protected]
The SOFT represent a Network of 40+ national and international member organizations. Over the years the SOFT has successfully completed 23 key projects for farmers, women and youth with a cadre development of 870 facilitators and trainers skilled on FFS learning system on field crops, water, pulses, seed production, food processing, bee keeping, poultry & livestock, kitchen gardening, agribusiness, nutrition and ecological based transformative agriculture. Currently SOFT is pursuing and implementing ICT based e-FFS learning management system along with Irrigation Field School (IFS), in addition to other farmer-led participatory learning models with the help of ACIAR (Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research).