14/03/2011

The evaluations submitted at the end of the six regional workshops held to support applicants in preparing their proposals for Treaty Benefit-sharing Fund Grants were filled with compliments. To the question, “Would you suggest to continue this approach of supporting applicants through help desk workshops?” one participant who attended the Ouagadougou workshop wrote, “This is wonderful – the first time to see an international organization support candidates who apply for funding,” while another in the Nairobi workshop wrote “Oh yes, yes.”

The 2-day workshops, also held in Cairo, Chennai, Fiji and Peru, not only gave the participants background information on increasing importance of adapting plant genetic resources to climate change, they also offered sessions on basic project management and evaluation, and provided specific guidance on how to fill out the extremely detailed application forms correctly.

The workshops filled an important gap, brought on by a qualitative shift from resource-based to results-based management of projects. Thus, the sessions helped the applicants better define their projects’ indicators, outputs and logframes that the application forms called for.

“We wanted them to have the mindset of looking at the output they wanted to achieve and then to look for the means to achieve it,” said Helpdesk Coordinator Adam Yao who led five of the workshops.

“We were surprised how many participants wanted refresher sessions on how to manage and evaluate projects,” added Mr Yao, who also provided individual coaching sessions to each participant. The benefits of these workshops will last long beyond the deadline for filing the project proposals, because working together with others from their regions allowed the participants to start building networks. In each workshop, participants initiated discussions on how they could continue to work together.

When the workshops were over, the Helpdesk support continued in the form of a dedicated phone line that was set up specifically to answer questions of the applicants in the two days before the deadline. Experts were on hand to field questions whether they came by phone or email.

As this was the first time for such an undertaking, lessons were learned. Some of the sessions lasted late into the night, leading to the suggestion to increase the workshops from 2 days to 3–4 days, and also to consider linking participants across regions for more exchange of ideas.