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  In its 26 years of history, Intercooperation (IC) – a Swiss Foundation – has implemented several programmes and projects mostly mandated by Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC). IC has been working in Pakistan since 1982 with an emphasis on Natural Resource Management. In the last years IC-Pakistan has, among other things, increasingly engaged in value chain promotion, see website www.intercooperation.org.pk for more details.
In 2006, the process to merge a majority of IC-Pakistan’s existing projects under one comprehensive programme started, aiming at the initiation of a new Livelihood Programme (LP) in 2008. In order to facilitate this transition and add value to IC-Pakistan’s rural economy profile, it has been considered helpful to revitalize the Market and Enterprise Development Synergy Group (MED SG) with the mandate to capitalize experiences (CAPEX).
The MED SG consisted of several local mid-management level staff (mostly MED experts) from different projects, and it met on a monthly basis. From June 2007 to December 2007, this CAPEX process was facilitated by a Swiss intern: Kimon Schneider. He is currently enrolled at NADEL (Postgraduate Studies in Development Cooperation at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, ETH). The objectives of the MED SG were:
- Establish a dynamic and sustainable mechanism to work with SG members on CAPEX
- Phasing out projects capitalize particular market related themes to unfold "best practices" and develop recommendations for the Livelihood Programme
- Facilitate regular MED related thematic efforts during the Livelihood Programme
The MED SG’s work focused on capturing and processing experiences. It invested in field visits, meetings, workshops and a CAPEX exposure visit to Bangladesh in order to thematically capitalize on “strengthening and establishing linkages with Business Development Service Providers (BDSPs)”, hereafter referred to as “enhancing BDS performance”.
What follows was written by Kimon Schneider (Swiss intern), in collaboration with the MED SG members. It firstly provides a few brief comments on the methodology applied, and then presents an excerpt of main thematic lessons learnt and recommendations in table format. Finally, and this is where emphasis is put on, it outlines the pros and cons of the applied methodology.
Methodology
In order to capitalize IC-Pakistan’s project experience field based information was organized, analyzed and documented according to ILEIA’s (2007) generic five step documentation methodology: “Learning from experience: A manual for organising, analysing and documenting field based information”. It is important to note that this methodology is meant to be flexible, i.e. applicable in different settings. In our setting, for example, we have been dealing with a particular theme. We have not, however, been dealing with a whole project, as is the case in ILEIA’s corresponding manual. Therefore, the crux in our case was to “…use this manual creatively and intelligently, rather than as a recipe book…develop an approach that suits [our] own situation best” (ILEIA 2007: 8).
 Lessons learnt
Pros and Cons of the methodology
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More information?
Please write to Kimon Schneider, Intercooperation Pakistan
IC Delegation Office,
House 60, street 9, Sector GIII, Phase II
Hayatabad, Peshawar, Pakistan.
E-mail: icpak@pes.comsats.net.pk ; kimon_schneider@hotmail.com
http://www.intercooperation.org.pk
For more information about Intercooperation's activities worldwide, visit
http://www.intercooperation.ch
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