1. National Workshop on Linking the Last Mile: Best practices in Rural Communication for Agriculture and Natural Resource Management

The workshop was organized from July 31 - 1 August by NAFRI, NAFES and Village Focus International. The workshop brought together more than 170 participants from around the country to discuss how to improve farmers' and extension agents' access to information. The main goal of the workshop was to identify mechanisms for improving communication and information flows to the local level, particularly the village cluster level (Kum Ban Pattana). It was an unique event in that that a diverse range of participants attended, including: farmer leaders, representatives of mass media, ministry of health and ministry of education along with representatives from government and NGO staff working in agriculture and natural resources management sector.

1. Linkages to the media need to be strengthened as the mass media (radio, tv, newspaper) offers a good channel to communicate technical and market related information as well as raise awareness on land related issues. NAFRI, NAFES and NLMA will explore improving/strengthening linkages to the mass media -- it is expected that a workshop/meeting will be held towards the end of the year to further work on this.  

2. Farmer groups and farmer associations at different levels are an important part of the communication system, but experience is still limited: LEAP, CIRAD/PRONAE and URDP will further collect lessons and experiences on farmer group associations and promote the development of farmer groups and/or associations/unions at different levels. If you are working on farmer group development and would like to be involved please contact the people below.

3. Need to improve standards and mechanisms for information sharing (i.e. different types of databanks):  IUCN, NAFRI, NAFES and NLMA will work on this further and it is expected that there will be a meeting among key actors around end of November/December to discuss this further

4. There is a need to improve knowledge and awareness on land rights and responsibilities. Village Focus International and NLMA/Land and Natural Resource Research and Information Center are exploring how to develop an information and communication program on land rights and responsibilities to improve farmers, communities and local government staffs' knowledge and awareness on land issues.  If you are interested in this please contact Hongthong Sirivath ( hongthong@villagefocus.orgThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ) and/or Chantaviphone Inthavong for more information.

 Workshop on Linking the last mile

2.  Workshop on Managing Digital Resources for Agriculture and Natural Resource Management

A follow up activity to this was a workshop with key actors at the national level in December on managing digital resources for agriculture and natural resource management.  The workshop brought together more than forty participants from more than 20 organizations and projects attended the day and half meeting.

An agreement between all participants was made which commits participants and organizations to improve sharing of information across organizations, ensure open access to information materials and also promote production and dissemination of Lao language materials.

The agreement is broken into three areas:

   1. a preamble which refers to other agreements on information and communication for development,
   2. general commitments which outline general principles and committments which all participants agreed to, and;
   3. specific agreements which are based on the four working groups 1) next steps for the CLICK initiative 2) Library standards and networking 3) Digital standards for sharing data 4) GIS

 Managing Digital Resources for Agriculture and Natural Resource Management (305.89 kB)

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