CRS Program Quality & Support Department 21 October 2008

1. Field Learning Through ICT: The CRS/ NetHope/ Intel Collaboration and Great Lakes Cassava Initiative Pilot CRS Program Quality & Support Department 21 October 2008

2. Presentation Overview • What is GLCI? Project overview & information challenges • Opportunity: NetHope Partnership • Education • Data capture & feedback/ M&E • Short Term Benefits • Long Term Benefits • Funding

3. Great Lakes Cassava Initiative

4. Great Lakes Cassava Initiative: Goals • To enable > 1,000,000 farmer families to improve their livelihood security by controlling cassava diseases through increased access to improved cuttings and through improved production and marketing • To strengthen the cassava seed system so that future shocks can be averted

5. GLCI Project Overview • Phase 1: Four years building on C3P • Six countries (Burundi, DRC, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda) • 53 local partners • Budget $22,376,283 (CRS $500,000) • > 1 million farm families (± 5,000 farmer groups)

6. GLCI Challenges in Training, Data and M&E • Staff time required to collect field data and transfer it to computerized database; errors • Difficulty collating data from various locations • Gaps in project manager and farmer group knowledge – language & curriculum barriers • Difficulty with feedback for trainings • IT: connectivity, staff savvy

8. NetHope Partnership • NetHope is a non-profit consortium of NGOs, now 25 strong • Facilitates partnerships between technology providers and NetHope members • Focused on improving the effectiveness and efficiency of humanitarian work through the use of technology

9. Pilot Opportunity • Develop common, scalable education and data collection solutions that • Help build local capacity • Operate in extreme environments • Support varying levels of internet access • Leverage cost-effective components that have been used successfully in for-profit and non-profit environments • Low cost rugged laptops (Intel) • Learning management system (Agilix) • Electronic forms capture (FormRouter) • Develop local business partnerships that support the use of this technology over time

10. Pilot Description • Proposed Solution • Education: Build capacity of field agents to train several thousand farmer groups • Data Recording: Monitor disease epidemiology • Reporting: Enhanced M&E tools • Target users: • CRS and Partner Staff • Researchers from Ministry of Agriculture • Field agents with training and disease monitoring responsibilities • Proposed scope: 250 laptops over 6 countries

11. Pilot description – education & training • Curriculum and course management: • Course standardization and distribution • Training module/ curriculum development support • Agilix to support curriculum developers to best utilize platform • Maintains training records • Feedback mechanism: did you really learn this? • Multi-media, interactive • Multiple languages, cultures – different field versions saved & shared

12. Example Training Architecture Design Team Design team 2-5 pax Theme leaders Master trainers 5-6 themes Disease cntl Marketing/ MF FG Org support Project Field staff 4-5 pax / theme Project staff Project staff Project staff Project staff Project staff Local Partner Teams Up to 70 Partner Teams Partner Teams Partner Teams Partner Teams Partner Teams Partner Teams Partner Teams Partner Teams Field Agents 200 + pax Clustered Beneficiary Groups 5000 + groups

13. Pilot description – data recording • Forms development and management • Text and video/image capability • Forms data entry • Simplified/ customized data entry • Forms storage and routing • Operate in range of environments • Fully connected to non-connected • Office to field • Powered to unpowered for extended periods of time • Mobile • Feedback to field

14. Horizontal feedback loop

18. Short Term Benefits • Reduce costs associated with data collection and analysis, improve quality and timeliness of data • Annual Disease Survey and Early Warning System • Participatory Variety Selection • Monitoring and Evaluation • Standardize training, reduce cost of adaptation to local environments, provide tools for measuring its effectiveness • Farmer Group Training • Seed Multiplication Training

19. Long Term Benefits • Extend use of technology to extend CRS and partnership’s outreach capabilities • Provide a comprehensive solution that can be easily adapted by CRS staff to address the full range of: • CRS’ field, partner and household field data collection and M&E needs • CRS’ field staff, partner, and beneficiary training needs

20. Funding • Initial analysis indicates that this solution will largely pay for itself through cost savings: • Eliminate data recording tasks • Eliminate rework due to data recording issues • Reduce costs of adapting and publishing training material for multiple audiences • Reduce travel requirements for training • Reduce costs of evaluating training results • Pursue an innovation grant to evaluate benefits and learning potential of the solution ($40K)