ICARDA KSinR Project uses mobile phones for knowledge sharing
The Pilot Project run by The International Centre for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) is focused on research/researchers recognizing the value of farmer knowledge, getting farmers to value their own knowledge and ideas, and finding ways to share farmers’ and other sources of knowledge between farmers. The main activity of the Pilot Project revolved around the organizing of an International Farmers’ Conference.
Over 50 farmers attended this conference of a different kind. Instead of being passive participants, listening to presentations by researchers, the farmers were instead asked to present their situations, knowledge, experiences, ideas and skills using storytelling. The stories of the farmers were recorded in video, audio and text forms to be disseminated in various ways. All will be made available on a Conference website to be launched soon.
- Farmers’ Conference website video quilt
Additionally the conference organizers uploaded small story clips onto mobile phones of farmers present and showed them how to send these to other farmers with mobile phones. This was done to stimulate some knowledge sharing and a sort of farmer-to-farmer extension system to help facilitate the spread of useful ideas, techniques and knowledge around agricultural activities, specifically plant breeding.
A small video clip was made to show farmers how to share the stories with each other and other farmers. This and other video clips will be available on the website.
- Video clip showing how to share stories via mobile phones
Yes this technology exists and works in Syria and some of the other countries involved! No it doesn’t work for everyone-that is true.
When we interviewed some of the participants after the conference we asked about how they felt about the stories made available and shared on the mobile phones. Some of the comments made were:
- “It is better for me, since I cannot read”
- “I like it, but I cannot keep the video on my phone forever so I would like a printed copy of the information too.”
- “I feel very proud to have the stories on my mobile phone and to be able to send them to others”
- “Not everyone has a phone, especially women”
- “It is nice to get the information as a story from a real person”
One Response to “ICARDA KSinR Project uses mobile phones for knowledge sharing”
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Nadia Manning-Thomas
I am the Knowledge Sharing and Uptake Specialist in IWMI, and previously lead the ICT-KM Knowledge Sharing in Research project
All content created by ICT-KM is published under a Creative Commons 3.0 license. You are free to share, republish or remix so long as you attribute ICT-KM clearly as the original source.
Hi Nadia,
Thanks for sharing this story, including the comments of some of the farmers.
There seems to be a lot of potential in the use of mobile phones for ‘communication for development’. However, I always wondered, does this go beyond a level of sending short messages with market information? How can mobile phones play a role in more substantial knowledge sharing? This example seems promissing.
I am very interested in some (technical) details about this example? E.g. Did the farmers get the video clip or just audio? How long were the clips? Was it complicated to make these clips? Did the conference organizers produce any material (written/video/audio) for the farmers on how to forward the clips?
I am asking in relation to our activities in farmer-led documentation whereby farmers themselves design and produce their ‘documentation’, which could be written, drawing, or audio/video too. I like this example, but wonder how complicated it is for farmers to make such clips themselves, even with help from the local media center. Or whether it’s possible for example to put the small videos on a community tv screen for those who do not have a cell phone (with video facilities). Looking forward to learning more about all this!
Cheers,
Dorine
(http://www.prolinnova.net/fld.php)