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IED's documentation workshops

Cameroon / Mali, novembre - decembre 2009

The documentation of field experiences, or capitalisation in French, is a process which helps an individual or a group of people reflect about their actions, to benefit from the lessons learnt during their work, and to "formalize" the knowledge acquired through practice. In Africa, the documentation of experiences is currently receiving a lot of attention. Most countries see a lot of interesting practices taking place in the field, but sharing the lessons which come out of these practices continues to be difficult because these are not documented. In particular, we have noticed that people in Francophone Africa do not contribute to our magazine, nor do they show what they do in the field. In order to contribute to the learning processes, IED Afrique started a separate programme on the documentation of agro ecological experiences three years ago. Run under the framework of AGRIDAPE, this programme consists simultaneously of:

• The publication of a series called "sharing from the field". A booklet is published every year. It consists of methodological tools which allow development agents to develop special abilities and to help themselves on documentation of experiences;
• Capacity building, through which we aim at the development of documentation expertise (in particular considering our partner institutions and network). The objective is to have a critical mass of people and institutions capable of documenting field experiences in sustainable agriculture (as a "pool of experts"), so that they take care of the documentation processes in the field.

During 2009 we organised two workshops. The first took place in Cameroun, between the 16th and the 20th of November, and the second one in Mali, between the 21st and the 24th December. Our main objective was to train trainers or facilitators so that they start running documentation processes with their organisations, or in the regions where they work.

Preparation
We started with the selection of the participants, while also taking care of the logistics. We looked first at the organisations which are already part of our network in these two countries. We recognized a lot of interest in this topic. They all work in the rural areas, and they all want to write about the things they do. Documentation was certainly something they had heard about, but for which they did not have the materials or tools - nor the expertise.

Selection of candidates
Seeing that there was a high demand, we had to go through a meticulous selection process, especially considering that we were aiming at a training of trainers workshop. The main requisites we set were that participants had to have experience as trainers, they had to be working in the rural areas, and they had to have experience with sustainable agriculture. Each participant was asked to fill in a questionnaire that showed their motivation, the relevance of their experience, their abilities in organizing training courses, and their perspectives on using the formation received. Throughout the workshops, we looked at::

• The opportunities and possibilities of putting the acquired skills in practice (especially considering their own commitment);
• The participants' own basic writing abilities;
• Their abilities for training and facilitation of workshops;
• The experiences being documented.

In the end we selected 13 persons to attend the workshop in Cameroon (3 journalists or professionals in communication, 1 seeder, 1 forester, 1 researcher and 7 agricultural engineers). In Mali we invited 11 persons, nine of them coming from the community and rural movements. The other two participants were an engineer for waters and forests and an agent from the private sector. They were all interested in being part of this workshop. As they mentioned themselves, they had all heard about documentation, they all recognized its importance, but all felt they could not do it.

Logistics :
The workshops were co-organised by the AGRIDAPE network in Cameroon and our partners in Mali. They helped us by publishing and distributing a call for candidates, and later also in identifying the venues, in contacting the participants and also in getting all the workshop materials. We had no difficulties in terms of resources, as all were available. But we clearly felt the need for more time. Seeing the demand for our workshop, we would have liked to run similar exercises in other countries, but this is not possible. We also felt that we could have benefited from longer sessions, especially when taking into account the writing bits (see below).

Once they were selected, all participants got the terms of reference, clearly stating their expected tasks and responsibilities. They all received a short training guide from IED, and they were all invited to send their comments after the workshop, to submit their written documents when ready (and thus contribute to the magazine). They were also invited to help in any future workshop. In terms of topics or themes, in previous workshops we asked participants to focus on a particular topic, and to look at this topic when documenting their work. This year we did not, so participants could focus on whatever interested them most. We thought that this, in the end, was going to help us find more articles for our magazine. The fact that all participants focused on different topics showed that our documentation approach can be used for many different field experiences, and not only for "technical" or for specific issues. But it also showed us that it is very important that participants have field experience, and that they know what they are writing about. Comparing both groups, the Cameroon team made better use of the workshop.

Development of the workshops
In short, both workshops consisted of 7 sessions, with sufficient time to go through a "real" documentation process. Each session included a "pedagogical overview", with which we wanted participants to see how each of the topics we were discussing fits with the rest, as part of the whole sequence of activities. In general, we followed the process as described and presented in "Du terrain au partage: Manuel pour la capitalisation des experiences". We also introduced a special session on the facilitation of a workshop. These sessions were:

1. Introduction session: This consisted of the general presentation of the workshop: we looked and discussed the workshop's objectives, looked at attendance and participation issues, we presented the programme and defined the general "working rules";

2. Definition and principles of documentation: After a rewarding brainstorming, we looked in detail at what we mean by documentation. Participants also exchanged ideas regarding the major principles of documentation, and also looked at the basic conditions which need to be met before a process starts;

3. The facilitation of a documentation workshop: This session helped participants to look at the whole process as a whole, and to think of the tools which are needed to run such a course. We also looked at the roles and attitudes of a facilitator;

4. Identification of an experience: Participants were asked to work in groups during this session, filling in the charts corresponding to this stage (see "Manuel..."). The work of each group was also shared with all other participants in plenary sessions. During these sharing moments they were all able to suggest corrections, and thus help the presenter to improve and polish his or her work;

5. Description of the experience: In the same way as in the previous session, participants were asked to work in groups, and to fill in the charts presented in the manual, describing their experience in detail. These charts were presented again to all participants, and discussed in the plenary

6. Analysis of an experience: This session focused on the identification of the main lessons emerging from the experience. Participants tried to look at the general impact of their work, at the successful and also at the weak elements of their work;

7. Writing techniques: Although we felt that a French language session was not needed, we did assign time for a set of exercises where participants would write themselves, and also recognize and evaluate a "good" article. The organisation of this session was done on the basis of the charts filled in by all participants. Participants were asked to write pieces of text using the information they had gathered in the earlier sessions.

In comparison to what we did in earlier workshops, this time we made some changes, hoping to get better results. During the analysis, for example, we did not use the criteria and indicators which the manual recommends, but instead presented a SWOT chart, and asked all participants to look at the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of their own experience and work. Then we looked at the impact of their work, in general, subdividing this later into environmental, social and economic impact. This proved to be easier (although we must admit that it only worked because at the beginning of the workshop we insisted on the importance of being honest and objective, and of saying things as they are - especially during the analysis).

We also made changes in the writing session, as we did not leave the writing bit for the very end, but instead asked participants to try to write after each session. As all participants were asked to fill in the charts presented in the manual, they had sufficient material to start writing. With small pieces of text completed, we were able to look into the problems they were facing, and were also able to focus on their editing skills. These writing exercises were expected to help participants finish the workshop with a first draft of an article ready. The only disadvantage was that we needed more time - reason why the participants in Mali were not able to finish.

Results
In total, after these two training workshops we got ten finished documents: 5 from Cameroon and 5 from Mali (see chart). These documents describe the work of their authors regarding animal breeding, rural innovations, climate change, sustainable agricultural practices, agriculture finance and food sovereignty.