Time	Session
	Day 1 - Tuesday 20 November "Social learning - in the CGIAR"
08.30	Registration
09.00	Welcome Introduction Agenda and objectives Ice-break discussion: What is social learning? What is its value?
10.30	Coffee / tea break
11.00	What is CCAFS and why does it bother about social learning Stock-taking presentation 1 (J. Gonsalves) and discussion Appendix 1 - Survey respondents Appendix 2 - Correspondents Appendix 3 - Social learning cases Appendix 4 - Survey feedback Appendix 5 - Listing of social learning efforts in CGIAR Appendix 6 - Potential workshop participants Appendix 7 - People engaged in social learning Appendix 8 - Promising approaches for CCAFS theme 4
12.30	Lunch break
14.00	The social learning marketplace (1) Alison's 'social learning and social differentiation' framework Boru's 'AAS hub programs' Osana's 'Farms of the future' - see presentation Open time / space
15.30	Coffee break
16.00	The social learning marketplace (2) Sophie's presentation of Mark Lundy's learning framework Polly's experiences with the innovation platform stock-taking workshop and IGAD 'KM and research workshops' (social learning at high level) Jacob's 'crowdsourced crop improvement' - see presentation
17.30	Close
19.00	Dinner out

	Day 2 - Wednesday 21 November "CCAFS approach to social learning - opportunities and constraints"
09.00	Results from the May workshop (presentation Liz) and the five focus themes Featuring some CCSL work: Social differentiation presentation Impact assessment
10.30	Coffee / tea break
11.00	Stock-taking[[image:/i/file_not_found.png width="32" height="32" caption="File Not Found"]]File Not Found , including 12 propositions Commenting / sorting the five themes and 12 propositions
12.30	Lunch break
14.00	Working on further areas of work for CCSL
15.30	Coffee break
16.00	Working on further areas of work for CCSL: Fitting ideas into CCAFS CCSL strategy Introducing the sandbox
17.30	Close

	Day 3 - Thursday 22 November "Learning socially about social learning"
09.00	Plenary discussion: How to bring together CCAFS and other CGIAR social learning initiatives? How to catalyze and connect the currently-scattered community and pockets of innovation? How to identify current or past ‘champions of social learning’ within CCAFS and, to some extent, the CGIAR, eventually to help establish synergies within CCAFS and explore cross-CRP synergies on ‘climate change and social learning’ Next steps and close
10.30	Coffee / tea break
11.00	Seminar PhD Wiebke Foerch
12.00	End of seminar
12.30	Lunch break

Day 1

What is social learning?

Participants were asked to buzz around their table to come up with some elements of a definition for what social learning is in their view.

Iterative, ongoing, transformative, purposeful collective learning which goes beyond extractive (e.g. participatory research) approaches.
Includes multiple perspectives and tries to understand these multiple perspectives + cultivates a space to do this.
We need to understand it better and evaluate social learning - through qualitative but also quantitative methods.

CCAFS presentation

Following the presentation, some people involved in specific CCAFS-funded activities explained what those entailed.
Patti:

CCAFS projects work through country platforms. Country program leaders have additional information. We're getting together in early December.
We'd like to organize a farmer innovation fair in East Africa - the plan is to do it in Kenya.
Prolinnova has experience with a 'local innovation support fund', which is very good among others for reaching women. We may want to support this.

Wiebke on Shamba Shape Up:

Reality TV show in Kenya - a farm make over show
7 million people are watching it in East Africa - we've been working with them to pass climate change messages
They also do baselining and monitoring for these programs

Alison on social differentiation work:

Identifying projects in CG that work on social differentiation - who is marginalized by systems and in decision-making: women, youth, elderly...

Liz on impact assessment of social learning:

This is starting work that looks at the pre-conditions for social learning to take place.

Julian on CGIAR stock-taking:

Adopted a broad approach to social learning
Looked at previous work done in gender... not something dramatically new but interesting to see the richness of 'social learning-type' experiences throughout the CGIAR
Used a one-to-one survey to get additional feedback from key respondents and it worked (Over 40 respondents out of almost 80 contacted).

Ewen on the Sandbox:

The sandbox is a space that came out of the need to continue the conversations that started in May
It is a demonstration space around social learning (we 'do' social learning about social learning in climate change) and it has options to develop initiatives with seed funding.
The sandbox consists of 2 things:
- A yammer for conversations (it can also happen through e-mails). There is a group on Yammer looking at the experience participants are having with Yammer, to find out what can be improved over time. The Yammer network started 2 months ago.
- A wiki, which was set up for the May workshop originally, and then evolved to become a work space (where we document everything)
We are also considering our own assessment of social learning on the sandbox - putting some ideas on Yammer - what does it look like in the future?

Questions and answers:

Q: How did you come up with these tools was it based on e.g. your NBDC experiences with Yammer?
A: Yes and no: We did have good experiences with the NBDC Yammer but we opted for this tool because we liked its features compared with other tools. Yammer is very interactive and flexible - it can be used strictly through e-mail as well. It can do everything an email group does + a host of other things. You can also see the profile of the person which makes it more human and friendly. However it is still work in progress.
Q: (to Liz) What did you mean with the impact assessment of social learning?
A: We're looking at the impact of social learning experiences and will be reporting on that (finding from literature) from others who have been working on social learning and assessing it. We have found out some useful cases from CG but also looked at a whole range of literature from different projects
Q: Why should we go this direction of social learning - in the science meeting - why bother about social learning?
A:
Comment (Boru): Social learning is also featured in our presentation about aquatic agricultural systems (AAS / CRP 1.3). If there is overlap we should explore it.
C (Julian): We need to see capacity development - given that CG is giving it value. How can we can get from the South in this kind of social learning? It is a reality we should understand. Social learning and research - it is an issue of strengthening capacity? We need more diversity!
C (Polly): Social learning at a local level strategy - to what extent can we explore SL is it something for farmers or should we do it for other kinds of stakeholders (at a higher level)?
C (Alison): Learning alliances in CIAT are a great example of connecting smallholder farmers to global arenas.
C (Peter): what we talked about in our meeting in May was to focus on local decision-making, and to look at implications for other levels, but the focus was clearly on the local level.
Q: I miss the national level. We're not trying to build new things but from whatever has already been done. A lot of the policy work which happens at the national level is somehow lost.
A:
C (Simon): Participatory research and SL - what comes out what is CGIAR engaged at. Different centers will have different focuses. What is the sphere of social learning, who are we talking about. How do we link these spheres? Linking the spheres could be a common agenda and extend it to the policy role. SL takes place at policy level. Partnerships are inherited in SL. Where are the partners (national level, etc....) we want to bring them in into these conversations.
C (Alison): In the SL projects I saw, intermediaries like NGO's, farmer associations are extremely important.
C (Boru): It would be great to develop a common agenda in SL across the CRP's. A practical suggestion for this common thread could be to set up a graphic (2 dimensions) plotting social learning initiatives in terms of scale (community level or regional level). There is a common agenda within CRPs - the danger is that people get confused with language, we should try and address this.
We have to remember that most CRP's won't have something organized in SL. Many CRP's are trying to understand this type of issues but there is no organized exercise within the CRP's. It depends on where the CRP's are built on.
C (Jacob): The terminology might look the same but we might be talking about something different.

Presentation by Julian - Part 1

Comments and Questions & Answers:

Q: Do we know the background of the respondents (social scientists etc.)?
A: I sent the questionnaire to 100 people that do SL, a mixed bag. Respondents were very optimistic about intermediate development outcomes as a tool.
- I had the chance to look at the different IDOs. There is a real danger - who does the work towards IDOs? The danger is of going back to numbers and holding people accountable against these IDOs. The danger is of looking for little things that you multiply (new toilets for x number of households) - this is what the Gates Foundation is doing but it's not helpful for social learning initiatives.
- There is not much connection between outcomes and indicators.
C (Peter): Gap between researchers in SL and at the director's level e.g. at the GCARD conference people seemed to be really far away from this kind of conversations.
By the end of the workshop we might have to write a letter to the CGIAR CEO to let him understand what is at stake.
- Right now it might not be a good timing but at some stage in the future it might be critical. We first need to clarify it among ourselves and then communicate it once we agree.

Presentation by Julian - Part 2 / The relevance of social learning to deliver on CCAF's theme 4 objectives

Comments and Questions & Answers:

Comment (Boru): On the definition of SL: what we're doing in AAS (we're getting on board onto tackling development challenge) as a program is to get people to learn and share development challenges. In terms of AAS CRP we are going towards shared understanding. You can be part of SL as a breeder as well. Is SL a better way of doing things - sthg to do today rater than to ask the question in two years time? How do we create incentives so people are compelled to engage in social learning?
C: A case in CIMMYT focuses on the lack of technology uptake - they're talking about conservation planning.
C (Peter): There are many steps along the way. People who make the small steps are usually pushed out (with their steps seen as not relevant, not 'pure' or good enough) but these small steps are essential too.

Marketplace of social learning experiences

In that session, participants openly shared some of their practical experiences with social learning as plenary presentations.

Social differentiation learning framework (Presentation by Alison)

Questions/comments:

A project in CIP in Peru that began as a first loop turned into the third loop. They were originally learning about food security but there was an increasing exchange of information in all directions.
There is perhaps a chronology in single-, double- and triple-loop learning?
Co-creation is a good word and was an essential process in this example.
Single and double loop - we had single and triple loop together. What are the right things to do?
That could be endemic to your projects with multistakeholders and co-frame it (let people have the option to frame the issue when starting)
Looks like it was perhaps too much research-driven (could be from farmers to researchers...)

The Climate Analogue Tool - Farms of the future (Osana)

Questions / comments:

What about changed perceptions (their learning), how are you going to strategize this work in the future?
A: We're going to link it and follow up with the participatory action research.
Q: Has it changed your perception?
A: It is too late a bit. (It is really helpful as it is a reality check). It considers the social component, it is too early to shape us to the next level. Now it is kind of learning by doing.

AAS's hub program (Boru)

Questions / comments:

Q: How do you do the community visioning process - what would you call the whole process?
A: Roll out
Q: How does the collective visioning take place?
A: The program is driven by community leader - The hub is a geographic location (we're going to start calling it learning landscape). It represents the actors we're working with in that area
Q: How do you projectize SL?
A: SL - the whole knowledge sharing and learning we didn't put it as an initiative in its own right, we put it at the centre of our framework. If you put something in the center you can also lose it and there is not project to plan and add budget to it.

CIAT's learking framework: Key insights to bridge the gap (Sophie)

A lot of the paper is derived from CIAT and CRS work.

Begin at the beginning
- Have a constant dialogue and share perspectives continually as opposed to 'plug-ins'; design collective agendas.
Measure what matters consistently (common FW, tools, methods.
Invest in partnerships (build trust, spaces to share ideas, learning process around issues of collective interests).
Build support from all of the above from organizations (from CRS experience).

Mark continues into a possible 'learning framework' using a learning cycle which

Each theme has a learning question and you look at existing work (e.g. 'why are some farmers adopting something and achieving results and others not') and do full learning cycle if you need to design your own methods and tools because there's not much available on this. Otherwise you just adapt existing work.
Learning selection process informs prototypes and says what your next learning question should be.
There are some key places (in red on the graph) where learning is taking place e.g.
- When developing methods you can develop comparable data sets
- Capacity building, learning and KM helps you learn about capacity development about specific topics, about M&E, development and facilitation of internal KM (partners and stakeholders), information backbone going throughout the whole thing.
In green are learning activities:
- Survey
- Writeshops to organize rough guide (not setting things in stone)
- At planning stage, train field level staff for specific application, review existing conditions for your M&E (e.g. could be through outcome journals), figure out methods for adaptation and set up feedback spaces.
- At field application stage, leave space for adaptation of the plan
- Then documenting results, looking at what results achieved compared with baseline information
- Learbning selection: final workshop to identify which innovations will be used again and be part of the cycle, discuss significant results...
- Design learning question...

For this work it's important to combine research and development
Comments / questions:

Q: Who is involved?
A: Some field staff (in charge of field application) and leaders from organizations, M&E folks etc. all from CIAT and CRS. Some applications were done with e.g. local partners (small local NGOs) like local extension service to do field application.
Q: This seems focused on Research in Development. What is left for farmers? A practice probably works but stakeholders/beneficiaries should also have a place in this cycle. It might be interesting for CCAFS to incorporate that type of process in their work for mitigation work. e.g. in carbon sequestration work there is usually a high level of abstraction and not enough involvement of local people in this.
A: It's not explicit in this paper and
Q: Difference between this and Boru's approach? Different starting points. In AAS everything is on the table and you have to face some of the challenges and follow some of these cycles. If CCAFS engages in this landscape sthg will come up. The question remains: how do you manage this? There might be a very different practice behind this picture and we need to express explicitly what are principles that stimulate societal learning. After years of work in those communities you get very different perspectives.
- Sometimes you also need to work in the same areas in a very different way.
- These 2 presentations (this one and Boru's) show very different perspectives.
A: CRS came to us to do some research for them. We usually go to dev partners to find scaling up. This project worked because R&D came together. Dev partners knew the communities.
- This reminds me that farmer-to-farmer work is a lot more advanced in LAC than in other regions. How to factor those farmer-to-farmer activities.
Q: What does this mean in terms of project cycle and funding? In projects donors want to see concrete results. In Mali, study mates between Mali and Netherlands worked together and ended up achieving strong results. No one asked them about M&E.

Polly's IP questions

How ILRI is using innovation platforms and what we have learned. In 5 of the 8 CRPs, IPs are considered the way forward. This is an adaptation of the learning alliance work. Some social scientists are questioning the value of IPs? We're wondering about 6 questions:
- What is the function of an IP in each project?
- What demand for service did the IP meet?
- What were the deliverables expected from the IP?
- What activities did the IP undertake?
- What types and numbers of stakeholders were part of the IP
- What resources were required to establish and maintain the IP?
We want to achieve a clear definition of what an IP is and develop a conceptual framework for IPs.
We also want to document successes and failures from existing IP projects - how do we organize our Social Learning?
Then we want to synthesize measurement of IP impact to date:
- For each IP, what problem did it set out to address?
- What audience did the IP attempt to reach?
- What M&E or impact indicators were used to asses the IP performance
- How were indicators used?
Looking forward: what do we want to have learned in the next 3 years? What impact indicators should we use? How would we set up M&E for IP impact in projects? How can we ensure proper measurement of indicators? How can we ensure proper learning and evaluation?

Comments and questions:

Comment: You could also review the applications of IPs in other contexts?
Comment: In CPWF there was a session to compare IPs across CPWF and what typology to use. 2 different approaches: In Mekong, they use IPs with single stakeholders around the issue of dams. And then ICRISAT work in Zimbabwe. You need to benchmark some of this work and use a formal baseline. You'd be looking for MSC methods etc. which are matched with these platforms.
- Decision-making processes are an issue in all IP processes - we should look into this.
Comment: Maybe it doesn't matter what an LA, IP is etc. but do you have your own understanding and how does that differ from other peoples' perspectives.
Comment: Co-framing of issues is important.

Polly's IGAD horn of Africa initiative

A year ago, ILRI was asked to host the Horn of Africa tech consortium to build resilience.
It's a social learning process. We try and promote 2 types of communities - mobilize research community and build a large KM programme. It has to demonstrate RoI for the 4 bn USD.
Partnership between FAO investment centre and CGIAR. Funded by USAID and global alliance of donors supporting this.
Activities:

Provide technical support to national investment plans - leading from behind. Positive feedback about the technical advice.
Engage the research community through producing 7 technical briefs responding to large areas of investment planning + KM + seed grants to foster innovation in response to demand. The Kenyan government is buying into KM and donors are asking again about value added.
How to demonstrate added value.

Comments and questions:

Comment: This is not about tech uptake but about involving R4D actors there.
Comment: There is a learning brief about engagement with communities and another one about impact assessment particularly of KM.
Comment: Tech briefs should also include briefs about the process. e.g. after action reviews, virtual meetings, learning journals etc.
Q: How do you measure demand? We're less good at finding out when demand is there. In terms of a knowledge resource, one of the measurements could be demand. What happens next?
A: We had interesting discussions about this. E.g. Irrigation in the drylands - lots of gov'ts would like that but researchers discourage this. If we do just demand-driven we wouldn't do climate change demand... Our tools are about mapping what priorities are in those country program investment plans to do a dialogue between them.

Jacob's crop improvement initiative

Farmers relying on seed system which already indicates we need to work with different partners. Most farmers recycle their seeds - the local seed system is much bigger than the genebank-breeding loop. We are not going to change this. How do we intervene in this system without radically changing it?
Issues to consider: Over 50% of land still not under modern varieties, push models are not successful (giving seed packets etc.), resilient climate-smart seed systems combine the best from formal and local seed systems; how to scale up experiences in local seed systems?
Here, we're talking about resilience (moving from fail-safe to safe fail): tight feedback loops, dynamic reorganization, built-in countermechanisms, dcoupling/diversity/modularity, simplicity, swarming, clustering etc. --> Close tie between resilience and social learning.
Is info flowing back from farmers to seed producers, breeders and genebanks? Current model is mostly supply-driven, with few opportunities for feedback loops, new ICTs provide opportunities for tighter feedback to learn about demand, challenges farmers face, while getting impact at scale. Using the long tail (e.g. 30% of Amazon profits are made on that long tail)...
Seeds4Needs: participatory variety trials in many places. We try to use ICT to make this initiative cheaper. We get high quality feedback but we can't scale up to cover entire areas.
Crowdsourced crop improvement: have groups of farmers and give them 3 sets of varieties in small bags from a larger set of varieties. Each farmer gets 3 out 12 (each a different combination). We only ask them to tell us what are best and worst varieties. We collect all that data and we collect GPS points for the farms and then farmers send back their results by mobile phone (not done yet). In the computer, we process data around 'preference learning' application to analyse the data and we send back results almost directly to farmers about 'top 3 varieties in your village, drought-resistant varieties etc.). We hope communities start talking about this and exchange seeds etc. Then we analyse what this means for next year's production.
This could be combined with social learning e.g. conducting interviews etc. to get a response to what's going on - get a loop back in the seed system. This shapes opportunities for social learning.
Testing now going on in India and soon in East Africa and in Central America.

Comments / questions:

Q: Digital Green does video-empowered extension around the farmer cluster. You can track their engagement.
A: We've been thinking about doing this with group work/discussions. It could also work for individuals where it's taboo to ask for seeds from neighbours.

Day 2

Zoom back on the May workshop and the 5 themes we identified

Documentation

It's important to understand what social learning is, how it works, what results it brings etc. We meant to do an inventory of cases - this is Julian's work. We also meant to write case studies, analyse or test findings etc. How do we draw the rich experiences from the CGIAR?

Endogenous social learning

It is not a different kind of social learning but it's firmly rooted in the political, social and economic environment, it takes into account local values/rights, customary laws, processes, instruments and mechanisms.
Next steps are an opportunity assessment, learning evaluative framework, joint needs assessment, three pilot studies focusing on endogenous social learning and engagement + documentation over the next 2 years.

Comment: What we're doing in AAS hubs is endogenous social learning with 3 pilot sites.

Social learning within CCAFS / CGIAR

The (May workshop) external group felt the challenge about social learning. Why CCAFS should play a role in this? Who do you work with and how do you work with them? Some indicators of success would be that e.g. we increase the number of proposals with explicit reference to social learning and an increase in partnership agreements such as CIAT/CRS.
Next steps: dynamic basket of good practices, catalysing social learning across CCAFS network, co-learning/co-creation process.

Comment: We've got to ask ourselves what role we play. We are researchers so we have to work on research and the role of joint enquiry (identifying questions across sectors) to build social learning, the network etc. and a change in the learning landscape we are engaging in. The research process itself has potential to strongly embed SL. With AAS and CCAFS we can develop this narrative together and relate this back to IDOs - our IDOs have to be related to this narrative.
C: Why CCAFS? Climate change is a wicked problem requiring multiple knowledges. It's an obvious place to work on SL.

Social differentiation

This came up a lot in May. We need to get our head around better practices addressing social differentiation (accommodation of languages, facilitating the right kind of processes).
Next steps: create a working group within CCAFS, review of CGIAR projects, build a network, developing internal skills and convene good dialogue spaces.

Timescales

Addressing different needs and lenses, recognizing time as an entry point.
Next steps? developing a ToC, Developing a time-horizons evaluation framework, an incentives framework and methodologies for evaluating change.

Comment: You might want to change the name of this ToC for timescales that you are talking about. This is more of a framework.
Comment: If we want to get more traction with social learning in CRPs we have to look at all these terms and see what other names those things are called in other CRPs.
Comment: This is a really excellent summary of the workshop but it is different from what I heard about it. How do we communicate to a wider audience? How do we make a case for social learning, in ways that don't scare other people? --> It might be good to have a group of people to review this summary work.

Social differentiation presentation

Theoretical framework looking at context and researcher-user interface. When the former 2 are in place social learning happens; mind the scale and channels through which learning occurs (information and change move beyond individuals across social groups and network). The exploratory scan in the CGIAR emphasized gender (overwhelmingly), traditional knowledge groups, youths etc. Alison plotted all 52 CG initiatives in the social learning framework. 5 initiatives had triple loop learning and social differentiation, 15 had double loop learning and social differentiation.
Focus on women - (IRRI & AfricaRice projects) using baseline studies and surveys, participatory varietal selection etc. The interface has affected the research. Women have used farmer-to-farmer learning videos. Does this look like triple-loop learning?

Comments, questions and answers:

Comment: I'm confused about seeing 'social learning' in your theoretical framework which is about social learning. Perhaps focus on 'knowledge and learning' rather than social learning in the theoretical framework.
C: It'd be interesting to know about outcomes for the women - what learning and change happened among women?
Q: How did IRRI present the evidence to breeders?
A: Not sure.
C: It seems very similar to CIP's approach to potato-breeding. The demand from farmers is exciting. How is the CGIAR interacting with others (NARS) to meet that demand is a key issue. The hard battle is to stimulate more sustained shift in changes in the systems about how research is being organized/structured etc. and how NARS can champion the work. This is critical to ensure triple-loop learning.
C: Focus on traditional knowledge (CIP) and on socio-economic status (CIAT work) around learning alliances.
C: Farmers are not homogeneous groups, they are atomized with very little social capital etc. Social differentiation is not just about groups but also about individuals that are trying to organize. Link with right-based approaches...
Q: To what extent can we accelerate learning? This also brings out the issue of intermediaries who are hugely significant.
Q: How the understanding of social differentiation can advance our thinking about targeting? Our strategies are not differentiated e.g. in India, record harvest but still 250 mio people hungry. What are differentiation strategies?
A: We're not just talking about learning in communities but also in organizations.
- These examples illustrate the great variety of contexts in which SL can take place. As research organizations we need to think how do these SL methodologies help us get better (SL to an end)... If we're too focused on the successful examples instead of stepping back we may miss some point.
Comment: We need to understand the preconditions for SL to happen or not. Where are successful examples of SL? Or failed ones? Why? How do we 'do' SL in communities where social networks are not well built?
Comment: One of the long-term preconditions is that the system pays attention to SL. What does it mean for what we do?
Q: What impact does the whole CG rearrangement into CRPs have for us to have a good timing to collect evidence about this? A lot of focus now goes to integrating, developing new plans. A lot of learning that took place e.g. with national partners has been put on the back burner. Hopefully it will come back again. A lot of previous projects have disappeared e.g. PRGA.
C: I can think of 2 different examples following same lessons. ICRAF working with Masaai on continual engagement model. Significant outcomes were achieved over 10 years.

Presentation by Liz: Lessons and principles of SL

Question/Answer/Comments:

Q: The importance of facilitation. Facilitating decision-making. When you get lots of ideas and opinions, you diverge. You need to hold things together for long enough to prepare the way you reach a decision... Is that a social learning?
A: Unless you have very good goals / purposes, clear ideas about what people are bringing to the table and very good facilitation (including good knowledge of how leadership develops in communities) the learning does not lead to much impact…
C: Learning from indigenous knowledge (alone) is not SL.
Comment (Patti): People need purposeful, structured facilitation. We have to get the assumptions out first (by e-mail) and then we bring people face-to-face and ask detailed questions and the conversation keeps going. It is about giving people a real structure (for private and public partnerships).
C (Peter): Another scale presented here with individual, network, systemic etc. – we need to have some definitions. We need to have a framework. How do we organize ourselves? We also have the KS Toolkit out there – we can further develop an SL toolkit on that wiki?
C (Phil): Take the CCAFS case. The CCAFS data management strategy compiles existing information – people do their own curation/storing/archiving/documentation but there’s one place where people go and get redirected. We do this with socio-economic data etc. We're not reinventing anything. We might have portals to re-direct potential users - where people do their own documentation. We can do that smartly.
C (Alison): Think about CCAFS what type of framing needs to come out. Can I ask the CCAFS team what kind of direction you're envisioning?
C (Peter): We're losing some precision from the May workshop. We're getting very broad.
C (Liz): I think we're triangulating, which is important in this context.
C (Boru): We do need SL to change the CGIAR and we need to start with ourselves.

Presentation by Julian - Part 3

Question/Answer/Comments:

Sophie: Lots of valuable information in your presentation. We can't stress enough the importance of legitimacy of research in up scaling and out scaling. Participatory communication is very important in SL. Emphasis on the local and community learning and differentiated local learning, we're leaving out national policy and regional interest which is very important for up scaling and out scaling - unless we see it from a commercial perspective. The influence of commercial interest in anything we do in agriculture is important. Local interest might change - we may have done a perfect process but it may apply only for the past if we ignore the commercial aspects.
- Demonstrate how you scale out can be used as a way out for convincing policy makers.
Comment: From the donor perspective - especially in Europe - policies shift we need to be able to respond to this. It won't be local food security only.
C: Local staff - regional idea we can make a difference at local learning by investing in SL and communication
C: How do we utilize growth of social learning to have more outcomes on the ground?
C (Boru): World Fish is organizing a workshop (29-30 January 2013). It could be a political event, the impact evaluation head would be attending the event. The workshop will be trying to crack the scaling issue.
C (Polly): Is there anything different and specific about change adaptation? We need to be focused and specific.
- (Julian): Scaling up research in NRM context was extremely difficult
C (Sophie): In climate change we have to have new ways to look at the problem to see when we're doing good and we have to be ready to see new things.

Afternoon session

In the late morning and afternoon on day 2 all groups developed a rich picture about what social picture meant for them and introduced it to one another. Below are comments preceding the graphic session.

What do we need to do? Clarify and sense from colleagues (CCAFS colleagues) what is helpful to do in a group and what we consider as take away?
(Phil) There are several things that are going on. One of the nice things of this meeting is that the cross CRP synergies would be very important to broaden and see not only SL strategy for CCAFS. In terms of a narrative, more ideas may be extracted - that can be presented to the CGIAR to underscore what we were talking about.
(Sophie) 1. Focus on what CCAFS can do and 2. Open it up to more opportunities (what CCAFS and other CRPs can do)
The problem here is that we would keep opening it up rather than rationalizing it more. We'll get into problems.
The RTB (roots, tubers and bananas) CRP uis doing SL. If you ask the designers of RTB they have their own understanding. There would be a conflict if we start doing SL for other CRP's
(Julian) How do we move the process forward? It tends to be confusing as it now stands. Now is the time to narrow it down to a strategy for CCAFS. We can do a mapping of SL initiatives from the different works that were done already.
(Boru) It is important that we do have a common position on what social learning is.

Graphic group work

In the afternoon we identified some areas of group work around a) developing a narrative that explains the rationale of social learning and might convince CGIAR scientists and many other people about its value, b) a framework building upon the rich pictures developed before.

Group 1 reporting back on Framework/Mapping/Model

Where is the entry point? 3 entry points:

The desire to have more impact - way of starting the story -
The climate change and food security story - if our audience already knows that message
To start from a real peoples' angle

It is all about people - how we can change/adopt our behavior?
Increasing population (7 and 8 billion people)
Science community - unlock the potential that lies in all of us
Learning by doing/modelling with all kinds of people is one of the ways that we un-tap these potential it includes
Looking at agricultural systems (crop, trees, livestock, NRM)
Linking learning (from local to national level)
Targeting and reaching many more with better information and choices - which links knowledge to action
User-inspired research
New way of working together is our vision
For the scientists we need to come up with a positive story

Comments, questions and answers:

Very scientist-centered - I suggest that it doesn't start from the universal climate change - people who really have a bigger impact are the scientists
Un-tap the potential of the system i.e. farmers and technologies, natural resources, knowledge that already exists
From a communications perspective we don't want too have many different narratives
Start doing it with whoever we want to do it with (policy makers, government etc... to different actors) and bring them in earlier enough.
Using the SL approach to bring all actors together and into the cycle
The issue of partnerships didn't come out clearly - on the presentation
Farmers are in the whole thing but there are other end users in these process
This is a major output of the workshop (the presentation)
Research as an engine for social learning - systems approach and user perspective (must come high up)
Partnership is also very important - but partnership with whom is missing in the picture
Un-tap the potential of everybody - we all got to pull our expertise which is very good

Group 2 reporting back on narratives

Different approaches/methodologies for engaging in SL
Trying to do it is a real opportunity and gap in the CG working with different institutions
All these approaches: how do we bring them all together and make coherent stories about SL?
CG is a real player - we need to increase its presence at a national scale to facilitate