ParCom12_Working+in+CRPs

=Partnership and Communication annual meeting 2012 = On 24-26 January, ILRI's P&C department held a meeting in Addis Ababa to review the highlights of 2011 and align plans and ideas around strategic priorities for 2012 and beyond. (go back to ParCom12 home page)


 * Topic **: Working in CRPs
 * Topic owner **: Peter Ballantyne

=Updates= was to be discussed at MC-TL on 16 March 2012; deferred because other CRP issues more critical

Why are we working on this?

 * CRPs will fail without excellent communication

What are our destinations?

 * We want all staff to be able to know about a CRP and what is happening in it - at the same time they have to be able to know what is expected of them in line with these CRP's
 * We want all people working in a CRP (beyond ILRI) to be able to find out what the crp is doing
 * Each project within the CRP's has its own message(s) - this needs to be clearly disseminated, internally, externally ...
 * The content of the CRP's, product, messages, purpose, plan, vision, should also be communicated, through the projects and beyond
 * We need consistency across CRP's in connection with comms
 * We should be able to measure impacts of knowledge sharing across CRP's
 * We should build the capacities - expertise into the projects - theme building, vision building - knowledge sharing
 * Strengthen the comms and outreach to end users/farmers/value chain
 * There should be alignment and prioritization of the comm's

What do we need?

 * We need to have a central node - comms people who coordinates and oversees all the comms coming from and to the CRP's who can be placed at the center of regions / research centers.Central node to coordinate at each CRP level
 * budgets 4 comms in projects and CRP level
 * We need "Champions" -at the project, site, regional, value chain and CRP level (champions could be "outside" people - don't have to be necessarily ILRI - R4D).
 * Identifying and Enabling - Capacity building;How do we enable them to enable others/colleagues/partners
 * Map what capacities we have (people) and their roles; and what gaps we need to fill, and how
 * We need the tools and systems, beyond the 'web' - identifying which tool works more better than the other to address the particular agendas and capitalize on that

How?

 * This is bigger than ILRI - Bigger than comms
 * Hence we need to involve others - Scientists, team leaders, boundary partners, project heads, Value chain actors, extension people
 * As ILRI we need to focus on CRP 3.4 and 4.3
 * Encourage and equip existing comms people; and reach out to enable other people


 * Threats? **
 * Overstretching ourselves
 * CRP's cover large number of countries, cultures, language - this is a huge challenge
 * There are certain projects that do not fit exactly in to the CRP's
 * Capacity gaps
 * Resistance to change


 * Actions**

Peter to finalise his draft ideas for 3.7 and expand more generally into concrete plans and proposals, and validate with key people in comms and the CRPs