20 pages., Via online newsletter article., This paper describes the challenges of decentralisation and privatisation of rural services from the perspective of
communication strategy development. The wave of decentralisation and privatisation in rural services worldwide creates challenges for rural communities, service providers and local governments. Local organisations – both in government and civil society – are confronted with rules and procedures that are unprecedented. The new roles require significant changes in attitudes, skills, and especially a new level of accountability. While communication strategies are only a part of the transformation, they are strategic tools that merit attention. This is an account of two cases where the authors have been involved in developing communication strategies aimed specifically at helping stakeholders make this transition. The first is the case of the Communication and Information Strategy for the National Agricultural Advisory Services Programme (NAADS) of Uganda. The second is the formulation of a plan to communicate the National Water Policy (NWP) and Rural Water Transition Plan in Mozambique. The paper concludes with some design principles for other strategies and with a review of the importance of communication research and planning.
22 pages, via online journal, Past explanations of why rural people respond as they do to external development interventions have emphasized the role of key limiting factors or critical characteristics (wealth, education, land tenure, etc.) which are thought to influence peoples' behavior in predictable ways. Efforts to promote tree planting and soil conservation in eight neighboring villages in the Philippines revealed that variation in participation did not reflect clear patterns based on existing household or village characteristics. Instead, specific responses to interventions reflected a complex, but interpretable interaction between existing socio-economic factors and historic trends or events. Characteristics like the degree of local knowledge, security of land tenure and community cohesion affected peoples' participation, in general, but their specific influence was neither predictable nor consistent between, and even within, individual villages. An appreciation of the specific historic context was often sufficient to explain these variations. The following historic trends and events were found to have important consequences for peoples' participation: migration and settlement history; family and group lineages; history of socio-political organization and conflict; history of physical isolation; labor history; economic–ecological history; environmental history; and past exposure to development agents. The paper concludes with a preliminary checklist of questions intended to assist researchers and development agents to discover relevant and interesting historical information about rural villages.
Landini, Fernando (author), Bianqui, Vanina (author), Vargas, Gilda (author), Inés Mathot y Rebolé, María (author), Martinez, Manuela (author), and Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, Argentina National Council of Scientific and Technological Research, Argentina
University of La Cuenca del Plata, Argentina
University of Morón, Argentina
University of Buenos Aires, Argentina
Format:
Online journal article
Publication Date:
2017-10-07
Published:
Argentina: Science Direct
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 106 Document Number: D10934
12 pages, via online journal, Working with farmers' groups, associations and cooperatives constitutes a fundamental element of extension work with family farmers. Despite the fact that extension practitioners face many problems in this area of their work, there is currently a lack of academic literature that systematically addresses the topic and offers concrete guidelines for practice. Thus, this paper will aim to clarify the benefits of farmers' groups, associations and networks within the context of family farming, systematise problems faced by rural extensionists when working with farmers' groups and associations, provide conceptual tools for understanding group and associative processes, and construct a set of guidelines and recommendations for facing said problems. In order to achieve these aims, the authors conducted an extensive literature review and drew upon their personal experience on the topic.
Results suggest that some of the benefits of associative work are: better access to inputs, produce and credit markets, the facilitation of learning processes, the empowerment of family farmers as social actors, and a reduction of rural extension costs. Additionally, with respects to the problems faced by extensionists, the following can be highlighted: individualist attitudes and conflicts between farmers, scarce participation and commitment, problems with leaderships and with organisations' administrative management, and the lack of extensionists' training to address these processes, among others. With regards to the factors that increase trust and cooperation are: interpersonal communication and mutual knowledge, sharing problems, values and objectives, and the existence of shared rules for the functioning of the group that include sanctions for transgressors. In this context, the extensionists' role will be that of facilitating processes of construction of group relationships, creating rules for the groups' functioning and developing the group's capacities for self-management.
