Group photo of participants at the Partnerships and Communications meeting 2012 (credit: ILRI/Catherine Pfeifer)
To be part of an interesting, engaging and successful meeting where, as the dust settles and participants get back at their work stations, there is a general feeling of being empowered and energized as opposed to feeling overwhelmed by long discussions that lack follow-up plans, is what most people desire. This was the feeling of participants in the 2012 International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), Partnership and Communications Planning Meeting.
Between 24 to 26 January, the ILRI Knowledge Management and Information Systems (KMIS), Public Awareness (PA),?Resource Mobilization (RM) and Capacity Strengthening (CaST) teams, made up of staff working with ILRI in Nairobi, Addis Ababa, New Delhi and Hanoi, gathered at the ILRI Addis campus, to strategise and plan for 2012. The meeting discussed among others, what impact the on-going changes in the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), with its focus on adopted CGIAR Research Programmes (CRP?s), would have on ILRI communications in 2012, how to improve communication strategies to meeting funding objectives and ways of enhancing team work in ILRI Partnerships and Communications team.
Bruce Scott, director of Partnerships and Communications at ILRI, opened the meeting by highlighting the department?s 2011 successes and pointing out the challenge of managing institutional communication in a complex and changing environment, especially as ILRI responds to ?a complex new environment where a large percentage of ILRI?s research must respond to the CRP?s and outline strategic institutional priorities in 2012.?
Participants engage in 'river of life' drawing session (credit: ILRI/Apollo Habtamu).
One of the highlights of this year?s meeting was the facilitation of the meeting?s sessions, which guided discussion and help to focus conversation. Led by Ewen Le Borgne, Knowledge Sharing and Communication Specialist at ILRI, who used creative techniques to draw the most from participants, open space discussions, face-to-face engagements, speed sharing and world cafes forums allowed the team to analyse successes, past challenges and to set goals for the future. This process enabled participants to map out topics, clarify on-going activities and set goals for 2012 and to come up with specific steps towards achieving these goals.
A hands-on open session held on the afternoon on Wednesday 25 January where participants learned about the different tools used for communication at ILRI, was especially popular. Participants learnt from one another on how to best use Wikis, Mahider, the ILRI website, video, Yammer & Twitter, Blogging, Photofilms and Slideshare to drive communication and knowledge sharing within the institute.
Among the key achievement of the meeting was an agreement on 7 key areas that the Partnerships and Communications team will focus on in 2012. These are, communication in the CRP?s environment, internal institutional communication, branding, resource mobilization, engaging with the wider livestock community, partnerships and inputs to the ILRI strategic processes. The meeting concluded by participants providing details on ?how to? achieve the expectations for each of the outlined areas and setting timelines.
Article credits:
Evelyn Katingi (ILRI) and Paul Karaimu (ILRI)
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