Making Every Voice Count for Adaptive Management (MEVCAM): Good practice identification workshop

Date

29 - 30 March 2021

Location

Zoom event

Host

Lilian Goredema
Coordinator, FAO
lilian.goredema@fao.org

About the Making Every Voice Count for Adaptive Management (MEVCAM) initiative 

A joint collaborative effort of FAO’s Forestry Division (NFO) and the South-South and Triangular Cooperation Division (PST), MEVCAM aims to bring local communities and decision makers together to identify challenges and develop common solutions to acute problems on the ground through the development of participatory videos.

Most of the work we do within the field of communications, monitoring and evaluation, we do it through words; we write, we discuss, we present, we represent, we inform, we reflect and then we disseminate. Simply put, most of this is only limited to words, either vocally or in texts/reports. These might not always serve the most important stakeholders who are agents of change in our projects, the community members. Whilst the significance of these written texts is undisputed, there are evidence to support the use of other forms of communication strategies. Chief among them are videos.

As part of this initiative, four RFS country projects have been selected to develop participatory videos that will visually document the challenges communities face and the ongoing adaptive measures being taken by communities with support of the RFS programme. The development of the video will be a locally-driven process with the aim of empowering community members to explore common challenges, voice their concerns and communicate their needs and ideas to decision-makers. 

 

About the training

The first step in this initiative is equipping country project teams with the knowledge necessary to lead the development of these videos at the community level. On 29 January 2021, the FAO team held the first in a series of webinars on “navigating the participator approach”. The webinar provided an overview of the participatory video approach and showcased draft videos from five participating countries.

On 29 – 30 March 2021, the FAO team held a second round of trainings for 20 participants to help the country projects identify good practices that can be derived from their project experience. These practices will be the foundation of the participatory video theme for each country. Preference is given to practices that have been tested and can be replicated in different contexts and therefore be recommended as a model. 

The workshop achieved the following objectives:

  1. To identify good practices learnt through the RFS projects in each individual country;
  2. To link these practices with key lessons outlined by each project; and
  3. To draft the good practice chosen to be documented through participatory videos.

 The workshop will be followed up by a series of tailored training sessions with each individual project team on participatory communication, video production and usage.


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