Dear GFRAS affiliates,

In this issue, we report on several conferences and meetings:

• The GFRAS Annual Meeting 2017 held in Australia
• A workshop on the New Extensionist Learning Kit in India;
• The Africa-wide Extension Week 2017;
• The annual meeting of the Mekong Extension Learning Alliance MELA.

In addition, we’d like to draw your attention to some new platforms and publications.

8th GFRAS Annual Meeting 2017 in Australia

Last year’s very successful Annual Meeting took place in Ingham and Townsville, Australia. The topic of “Rural Advisory Services and empowered youth for balanced transformation in rural and urban communities” spurred many discussions. You can find a report, all the presentations as well as other material on the meeting website. A big ‘thank you’ goes out to all the participants and the local organisers, in particular, of the Australasia-Pacific Extension Network APEN.

Workshop on the New Extensionist Learning Kit in India

In collaboration with MANAGE, CRISP, and IAEN, AESA organised a training workshop for disseminating ‘The New Extensionist Learning Kit’ on 5-6 October 2017. The workshop was aimed at promoting NELK among key personnel engaged in training and education of extension professionals in India. Twenty-five trainers or faculty engaged in capacity development of extension professionals within their organisations participated in the programme.

AESA Agricultural Extension
in South Asia Network 

Scaling up Climate Smart Agriculture: Integrating Youth, Women, and the Digital Revolution

Under this topic, the 3rd Africa-wide Agricultural Extension Week took place in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, from 30 October to 3 November 2017. More than 700 delegates from inside and outside Africa addressed the threat posed by climate change and variability to sustainable agricultural growth and rural transformation, and presented their recommendations in the Durban declaration. GFRAS, in close collaboration with AFAAS and DLEC, organised a side event on Strengthening Extension and Rural Advisory Services Systems in Africa, where the role, relevance, and functions of Country Fora in RAS systems was highlighted, and which led to several national actions plans.

AFAAS African Forum for
Agricultural Advisory Services

Enhancing Knowledge Sharing Along the Mekong River

The 3rd MELA Annual Meeting was held from 30 October to 1 November 2017, in Siem Reap, Kingdom of Cambodia. It gathered participants from all the countries in the Mekong region: Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. Participants discussed the role of RAS in nutrition-sensitive agriculture and food security with some very concrete points, such as the impact of the misuse of pesticides.

MELA Mekong Extension
Learning Alliance

New Platform on Organic Farming

With the aim of improving organic production and filling the gap in the exchange of information between farmers, farm advisers and scientists, several European organisations active in organic farming, in collaboration with EUFRAS and with funding from the European Union have created the OK-Net Arable Platform. The web platform provides tools and resources for finding solutions to problems in organic arable cropping along with a discussion space for platform users. It is available in 10 languages - Bulgarian, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, French, German, Hungarian, Italian and Latvian. 

EUFRAS European Forum for
Rural Advisory Services

Making a Difference in Food Security and Nutrition

From 9-13 October 2017, the UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS) held its 44th session at the FAO Headquarters in Rome, Italy. The GFRAS Secretariat took part and also set up a stall at the information market. GFRAS was especially interested in the part of the CFS sessions that had the topic of ‘Urbanization, rural transformation and implications for food security and nutrition’, as this related directly to the topic of the 2017 annual meeting.

CFS UN Committee
on World Food Security

Capacity Assessment of Regional Networks

In line with its main goal for the coming years, to strengthen the regional networks, in 2016 GFRAS started a process of assessing their capacities. Four areas were examined: organisational and institutional functioning; advocacy and policy; knowledge management and information communications technologies (ICT) use as well as professionalization of rural advisory services. In 2017, a synthesis report was prepared, which is now available on the GFRAS website.

GFRAS Global Forum
for Rural Advisory Services

DLEC  - Community of Practice

This past December, the Feed the Future Developing Local Extension Capacity (DLEC) project held its first annual global community of practice event in Washington, D.C. Led by Digital Green in partnership with Care International, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and GFRAS, DLEC is an action-oriented, evidence-based learning project that generates evidence through diagnostic studies and engagement activities, which in turn are used as a catalyst for mobilizing global and country-level communities of practice to advocate for improved extension and advisory services (EAS).  

DLEC Developing Local
Extension Capacity

With kind regards,

Lorenz Schwarz
GFRAS Secretariat
February - 2018

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