fara & dgroups
DESCRIPTION
Presentation by Myra Wopereis (FARA) at the Dgroups Peer Exchange - 15 November 2012 http://www.dgroups.infoTRANSCRIPT
Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa
Dgroups at FARA
by Myra WopereisDirector of Knowledge and Technologies, FARA
2012 Dgroups Annual Meeting15 Nov 2012
Outline
• Purpose of dgroups• Current status • Benefits • Challenges • Conclusion
Purpose of dgroupsTool to assist FARA: – as a forum to reach out (virtually) to diverse members across the
world– to communicate and manage platforms across the continent
Current status
• Members– 2528 from 102 countries– Skills improving in use of dgroups (including ethics)
• sub communities : 50
Benefits
• Provides continuous link with constituents in between the FARA Science week held every 3 years
• Empowers non-research stakeholders to engage in discussions on Africa’s agriculture research, extension, education initiatives.
• Advocacy and dissemination tool
• Focused discussions and management of platforms
Challenges • Management
– maintaining dynamic subcommunities and catalyzing discussions
– managing diverse skills and interests of members
– harnessing access to member details/profile
• Clear advantage compared to other tools i.e. social media tools (ning, linkedin, etc.)
• Members– understanding purpose of dgroups
– managing their own accounts
– following threads of discussions
Conclusion
• Clear benefits of dgroups to FARA
• Strengthen its use within the communications strategy including social media strategy of FARA
• Rationalizing the subcommunities, members’ list
• Assessment of effective of dgroups for FARA
• Need for comprehensive strategy and plan to manage FARA dgroups (dedicated staff to manage dgroups)
Key questions
• Monitoring and evaluation of dgroups • Member’s database analysis, use, exporting to
other programs• Management of main community vs.
subcommunity vs. subsubcommunity – flow of information – automatic membership
Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa
Thank you
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