CCAFS-ILRI Workshop on Communications and Social Learning in Climate Change

8-10 May 2012
ILRI Campus, Addis Ababa

Final integrated group work presentation (public plenary session)

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In this final session, six external reviewers (the 'dragons' that provided feedback a la Dragon's Den) gave their feedback on the integrated presentation that was given to them.

Bruno Gerard (CIMMYT)

• SL seems to be a generic tool. What makes it more weather-related? I expected more about this in the presentation.
• Is CCAFS taking initiative in Social Learning? What is the leadership of this group across CRPs – is it a duplication of efforts?
• I am surprised that the word innovation has not been mentioned once throughout your presentations.
• The link between the decision-making group and researchers is weak.
• Alignment: how do we align this with the 3 other teams in CCAFS?

Seleshi Bekele (UNECA)

• Is CCAFS going to bring a social context to the whole of CG and to the program?
• How do you link to the policy and the practice community – how does it influence the policy makers and the communities of practice?
• Why come up with this SL approach? Is it not sufficient to follow a social science approach (where do you want to focus)?

Tilahun Amede (IWMI/ILRI)

• Do we have that society for SL? There are like-minded people and many who understand SL but how about the outsiders who can’t understand what we are doing?
• Documentation and testing: there are steps to take: we would like to capture SL. It takes years and millions of dollars to implement this approach.
• What is the contribution of SL to decision-making? Policy-makers need evidence which is available; they need to see changes and actions, not hear words. Research should be accompanied by social learning and there should be concrete evidence.

Gijs van't Klooster (FAO)

• I don't really understand what you are talking about - it is not clear enough to me so it's likely not to be clear enough for others...
• Who is learning here? The researchers are learning but I can’t see how partners are benefiting from this...
• Who is going to absorb this social learning work and how different is this from farmer schools and other related initiatives?

Manuel Flury (SDC)

• Climate change is complex and so is social learning. – don’t forget analysis – we grasp complexity when we work on it in a reflexive way, (i.e. when we act and reflect, not just reflect).
• Pilots. The best pilots are not scalable. Scale up the practice not the pilots!
• Committee of practitioners – let them reflect on the practice.
• Don’t try a scientific approach of documentation.
• Bring the teams that write the proposals together and do the social learning with them.
• Stay away from taking all the process for yourself.

Axel Weiser (Save the Children)

• What is really new here?
• Word oriented – CCAFS and CG (it is not so much) about what you want to achieve;
• Learning and action: A lot has been mentioned about learning, not so much action has been mentioned;
• Be wary of SL in itself if there is no action to follow from it;
• What are CCAFS outcomes and the connection with SL from this?
• SL shouldn't be an outcome of your work, it should lead to something else.