On April 11th and 13th, IFAD arranged a two-day online workshop on knowledge management and communication for all four ongoing projects in China. The training was organised through close collaboration between APR, SKD and COM, and aimed to raise the capacity of the projects to capture and disseminate experiential knowledge from the field level. The training included several innovative features intended to raise engagement among participants, facilitate active knowledge exchange between projects, and provide balanced contributions of best practices from both an international and Chinese perspective.
Based on the principle that an inclusive approach is essential to achieve the knowledge-agenda, for this comprehensive training the projects were encouraged to extend the invitation to all project team members involved in collecting, reviewing, analysing, storing and disseminating knowledge. This included staff and consultants working at the national, provincial, and county level. The two sessions of the training attracted 125 and 100 participants respectively. Most of the participants worked within project management, M&E, communications, and specific technical areas. The first session was led by SKD and APR with a focus on KM fundamentals, including concretely clarifying KM as a concept, expounding IFAD’s expectations on field-level KM, and integration of KM in project teams and inclusive approaches towards beneficiaries and other stakeholders. The importance of field knowledge for SSTC and building evidence for policy engagement were also discussed. One of the highlights of the session was a presentation by Mr. Liu Haijun, deputy director of the recently completed project QLMAPRP, outlining the project’s experience in working with KM, together with lessons learned and recommendations. The second session aimed at providing practical recommendations on implementing KM through M&E and communication tools. Here, based on her extensive experience of working on M&E with IFAD projects in China, Professor Bi Jieying from the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences provided a presentation on how to translate project data into knowledge products with a particular emphasis on the importance of inclusive approaches towards beneficiaries. Susan Beccio, Regional Communication Officer for APR, provided a general overview of IFAD communication practices and contributed specific advice on building storylines in project cases. Ms Chang Tianle, founder of the think tank Foodthink and Beijing Farmers’ Market, provided an inspiring presentation based on her long experience of advocacy for organic farming practices and smallholder agriculture. Her presentation emphasised best practices in adaptive communication to Chinese and international audiences. The second session featured also short presentations by each of the ongoing projects on their ongoing KM practices and specific knowledge products. Overall, the conceptual design of the training was a success. This comprehensive training will be followed up with more targeted capacity building efforts at the project level. In his final remarks, Mr Matteo Marchisio, IFAD Country Director for China, also announced the launch of a new KM Award to be held within the China portfolio later this year in recognition of exemplary knowledge products produced by the projects. The training documents and recordings are available by request to Peter Ekblad KM champions have a big impact on IFAD’s effectiveness. They advocate and spread compelling messages on the benefits of KM within IFAD and with our partners. They also generate interest and endorse KM initiatives in projects. They are knowledge brokers by default because they connect teams and programmes by breaking down silos. KM champions are not nominated based on their job profiles, they naturally work their way into the role through experience and by gaining the trust of their peers and managers.
Would you be interested to become a KM champion? We need knowledge champions in IFAD so that we can use the best solutions available to address challenges to improve the livelihoods of the rural poor. Knowledge champions not only advocate about success stories to different parts of the organization and beyond, they bring along a strong learning agenda that allows innovations to emerge in projects. Any staff can receive training on how to become a knowledge champion. Being a KM enthusiast is just one of the prerequisites. Also important, are facilitation and influencing skills as well as story-telling, the ability to bring people together, listening and grasping the big picture. KM champions in action at IFAD Knowledge sharing is a fundamental activity that is easily embedded in what each one of us is already doing. For example, by sharing project stories of success and failure across countries and regions, you are acting as a knowledge broker and champion and contributing to scaling up what works into another geographical context. During the KM Interact in July 2019, Nigel Brett, Director of the Asia & Pacific division gave us an example of an IFAD-funded project with the Government of Kenya on graduation models for the ultra-poor. The government was aware that IFAD had a similar project in Bangladesh involving BRAC, the world’s largest NGO as a partner so the country portfolio manager at the time, proactively recruited an outstanding knowledge broker consultant as part of the design team. The knowledge broker not only contributed to identifying suitable partners for the project, she also facilitated south-south cooperation and knowledge flows by demonstrating that what worked in one region can easily be adapted to another region. This created a duplication of successful graduation models in two regions, furthering the benefits to the ultra-poor. It’s safe to say that KM champions are also change agents. When projects are aware that there are solutions to the same challenges elsewhere, it is easier to re-use those same lessons. If you think about it carefully, lessons are really not learnt unless they are re-used in other geographical contexts, in other projects or even taken-up by other organizations working for the same cause. By sharing their experiences in IFAD’s internal KM Community of Practice, KM champions triggered organizational learning and dialogue while contributing to IFAD's COVID-19 response on important issues like project repurposing, remote supervision, digital solutions, financial services and remittances. KM champions, the more the better IFAD is a knowledge-driven organization based on evidence and trust. Our objective is to have many more KM champions to spread the word on how to do good and less time-consuming KM and make project successes and innovations visible to the world. However, we know that time is everyone’s biggest barrier. One way to overcome this is to help colleagues understand that by sharing experiences and lessons, by promoting collaboration and learning and by improving KM skills, you can actually make your work easier and save time! Help us make it a reality to un-hide IFAD’s gems. If you’d like to know more about what you can do as a KM champion, contact your regional KM resource person here. The storytelling module of the United Nations Innovation Toolkit is a great resource to help UN staff members better communicate the impact of the work that they do.
In the first series of guest blogs ▶️ http://ow.ly/Ais450CKxKH from UN Innovation Toolkit users, Nerina Muzurovic tells the inspiring story of a young rural fisherwoman, to explain how the storytelling module is helping IFAD capture the impact of their innovations. Learn more about #UNInnovationToolkit ➡️ http://ow.ly/5Erh50CKz13 By Ilaria Firmian
Just before the closing of a very peculiar year, the APR regional team has launched a newsletter at the end of last week! You can read Issue #1 here! In a historical moment when interaction is limited, we thought we would create an instrument to boost the sharing of knowledge among our division and beyond. Being based on the very simple principle of making the knowledge generated in the context of our daily work more accessible, the 'IFAD in Asia and the Pacific' newsletter will have articles and information relevant to colleagues in operations. Most of its content will have a sub-regional focus on a rotational basis and will be prepared in coordination with country teams and thematic experts. It will be published once every two months. To subscribe to our newsletter, please fill in the dedicated form. We hope you will find this initiative useful and look forward to many inputs and suggestions! By Laura Sollazzo and Tisorn Songsermsawas
Learning lessons quickly as the crisis unfolds and providing timely evidence-based and actionable recommendations to decision-makers is a key aspect of IFAD’s policy engagement and overall COVID-19 response. For this reason, the KM Coordination Group has put in place an agile KM Community of Practice (CoP) platform to enable fast learning -even before the first project was approved through the IFAD’s Rural Poor Stimulus Facility. The purpose is to connect staff who have KM in their job responsibilities or are interested in KM. Its members can learn from frontline experiences in IFAD projects and other agencies on responses to COVID-19 and about challenges and opportunities related to knowledge management and organisational learning. The aim is to incentivize cross-regional knowledge exchange within the organisation and make available the best solutions based on evidence to foster the scaling-up of lessons for faster, more efficient delivery of rural development projects. This community is a closed group for IFAD staff only to join. You can join the KM CoP on Dgroup through this link. |