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For more information about the CV and its activities contact: Roslyn Prinsley, RIRDC, phone 02 6271 4033, email roslyn.prinsley@rirdc.gov.au John McKenzie, John McKenzie and Associates, phone 0402 018 318, email mckenzj@ix.net.au
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Thank you. This newsletter is compiled by Anne Currey, Naturally Resourceful Pty Ltd. © Copyright Cooperative Venture for Capacity Building and Innovation in Rural Industries.
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Bunker Briefings: NRM Research Meets Policy Seminar Series The Bunker Briefings is a new communication venture aimed to making research findings accessible to policy makers. Five seminars are planned for next year. Topics and dates are:
For information go to website http://www.lwa.gov.au/downloads/in formation/SIRP_seminar_timetable.p df or contact Jenny Tomkins, phone (02) 6274 2720, email: jenny.tomkins@ea.gov.au The Bunker Briefings are
a collaboration between the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry,
Department of the Environment and Heritage and Land & Water Australia.
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In this issue:
Capacity building has become flavour of the month and many projects are badged as such. But are they really? How do you identify whether a project uses capacity building principles or not? There are a number of elements that are fundamental to capacity building. These elements are listed below as a guide to whether or not a project or activity is really building capacity. Check these questions. Is the program based on colearning so that everyone who has knowledge relevant to the project, is willing to share, and is also willing to learn more? If this is not the case, for example a provider/user perspective is taken whereby an agency or organisation (providers) develop and offer training, information or resources for users, such as landowners, then the project is unlikely to be a capacity building project. Power relations in this model are inherently unequal and likely to distort mutual perceptions and expectations. With capacity building “providers” are best seen as providing access to the resources needed to improve a problematic situation. Do the initial goals of action-taking vary among stakeholders, e.g. an increase in financial capital for commercial agents, physical and financial capital for farmers, social capital for community groups, and human capital for educators? This is a key element of capacity. A “one-size-fits-all” approach where there is one (often imposed) goal for taking action to improve a particular situation, is not consistent with capacity building. Are incentives tailored to meet the initial goals of different stakeholders, e.g. a tax incentive or access to infrastructure funds for those seeking an increase in physical or financial capital? Offering a single incentive to all stakeholders is not likely to stimulate participation in capacity building. Do other stakeholders participate in a joint effort to improve a problematic situation? This participation provides a context for generating shared increases in the stock of human, social, financial, physical and natural capital. Is leadership style facilitative and does it result in all stakeholders being able to initiate action to do with the project? Facilitative leadership is essential for building and maintaining a pattern of reflective practice† among stakeholders in a joint effort to improve a problematic situation. If leadership style is top down or the leader comes from a funding group or organisation that sees itself as the one to which the group is “accountable” then it is unlikely that capacity building principles are being implemented. † Reflective practice refers to on-the-spot surfacing, criticising, restructuring, and testing of intuitive understandings of your experience with a particular event or activity. It is an important part of capacity building as it allows learning and co-learning to occur. These principles are taken from Growing the Capital of Rural Australia – the Task of Capacity Building, a report for the Cooperative Venture by Rural Enablers. The report will be available on website www.rirdc.gov.au (go to Cooperative Venture for Capacity Building page) in the new year. Happening
out there
Here’s a sample. Queensland Local Government Social Capital Project. The aim of this project is to help local government to better engage local communities and to build economic development. A stimulus for the project was studies done in 1999 and 2001 revealing substantial community concern about consultation and the way councils respond to community issues. The studies also showed that the community “holds negative attitudes to councils’ management and governance practices”. The project is based on the view that identifying social capital components can help with the process of effective government and facilitate governance obligation. It has looked at five councils in the State, and a report has been prepared on the potential roles of Queensland local government in building social capital. The report should be available in the new year on website www.lgaq.asn.au. Project leader is Dr Geoffrey Woolcock from University of Queensland, phone 07 3381 1534, email g.woolcock@staff.uqi.uq.edu.au Maleny Working Together Project. According to the coordinators of this project, it is probably the most intensive and rigorous piece of social research that has been attempted in Australia. Funded through the Commonwealth Department of Family and Community Services’ “Stronger Families and Communities” program (and topped up with Queensland Tourism funds), Maleny Working Together has enabled a diverse project team to gather data for a community audit (consisting of environmental, economic, social, cultural, political and technological aspects of community) and a community needs analysis, and to develop a set of future scenarios for the rural hinterland district of the Sunshine Coast. In the process it has canvassed every fourth household in the district, interviewed the 150 community groups, run workshops and focus groups, and conducted a “global scan” to compare local trends and issues with those in the global context. The volunteer component sourced to carry out the project has run into many hundreds of hours. A strategic options plan will be produced using the data collected from a broad range of consultation strategies. For more information, contact project coordinators: Jill Jordan jjordan@sun.big.net.au
While the aims of this project, to increase productivity and profitability, aren’t new in agriculture, its guiding principle is different from a lot of previous extension programs. This principle is that uptake of new technologies and improved management practices will only improve by having a program that is grower owned and driven and based around group learning. Bestwool groups choose their own members and coordinators, and find presenters, courses or trials that meet the educational needs dictated by the group. In terms of capacity building principles, groups are based on colearning and the groups define their goals and how to achieve them. There are currently 64 Bestwool groups (1500+ growers) in Victoria and a recent study using ABARE data found that members were 22% more productive than non members. Australian Wool Innovation (AWI), a Cooperative Venture partner, is the major investor in a project. Other investors are the Victorian Department of Primary Industries and Victorian Farmers Federation. For more information contact AWI on 1800 070 099. Sugar RDC plans for capacity building. The Sugar RDC has included industry capacity building as one of its four programs. The aim of the program, which is to build human capacity for change, learning and innovation, closely mirrors that of the Cooperative Venture, of which SRDC is a partner. SRDC emphasizes the need to incorporate capacity building methodologies across its R&D portfolio, “to promote more effective coordination of R&D activities across industry and R&D providers, and enhance the performance of the R&D system through evaluation, review and feedback.” For more information about SRDC’s capacity building activities contact Tracy Henderson, phone (07) 3210 0495 email thenderson@srdc.gov.au or go to website www.srdc.gov.au and check out their annual report and R&D plan. Project
Update
Extension and education programs being implemented around Australia. In our first newsletter we reported on the three extension/education program models identified in this project. With more work, the research team has added two new models. They now classify extension and education programs as follows: The Group Facilitation/Empowerment Model: This model focuses on increasing the capacity of participants in planning and decision-making and in seeking their own education/training needs based on their situation. The Technological Development Model: This model is about working with individuals and groups to develop specific technologies, management practices or decision support systems. It often involves local trials, demonstrations, field days and on-site visits. The Programmed Learning Model: This model is about delivering specifically designed training programs/workshops. These can be delivered in a variety of modes and learning approaches. The Information Access Model: This model is about providing a range of information that individuals and groups can access from a distance and at a time that suits them. It can be based on a website, information centre or other centralised locations. The Personalised Consultant Model: This model recognises the interaction between a mentor or consultant who works over time with an individual or community to improve their managerial, technological, social or environmental situation – or individuals from different backgrounds working together on a 1:1 basis. The analysis has shown that these different extension/education models work in well together as a suite of complementary capacity building avenues. For example, members of groups in projects operating under the group facilita tion/empowerment model provide a key source of participants in training offered through the programmed learning model as they are motivated to seek identified training. People who participate in programmed learning model initiatives often learn about, and are motivated to seek, information available in initiatives under the information access model. Another way of visualising this complementarity is the Capacity Building Ladder:
The Capacity Building
Ladder
The left rungs show the need for ongoing specific training/education products to allow individuals and groups to move to the next level. The right rungs indicate the value in individual enterprises having iterative consultant/mentoring support for incorporating changes at an enterprise level. Implications. The challenge is to stand back and take a bird’s-eye view of the extension and education training needs to support capacity building in industries and communities and not focus on one model or mode of delivery. New guidelines, principles and tools to generate effective information and learning. As part of the project, a database was designed to store information on extension models. The database, a decision support tool for extension staff, project managers and funders, can be used to find the most appropriate models as well as examples of projects with the closest match to user needs. Users can search for projects based on abstract and key words and can differentiate between different types of models, funders, industries and issues. They can choose to read the whole report on a particular project or can choose summaries about each of the model types. Summaries of model attributes are displayed. The diagram below is the first step in searching the data base via model type. Users look at the descriptions of the models and then decide on which they would like more information.
In the next newsletter we will describe how to search within each of the models. For a project summary go to: www.rirdc.gov.au/capacitybuilding/project1summary.pdf For information about the project and/or if you know of a project that could be included in the review, you can contact Jeff Coutts, email couttsjr@bigpond.net.au. |
