Refreshing course

Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation

Authors

Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation

Date Issued

2003

Language

Type

News Item

Accessibility

Open Access

Metadata

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Citation

CTA. 2003. Refreshing course. Spore 104. CTA, Wageningen, The Netherlands.

Permanent link to cite or share this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10568/47943

External link to download this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10568/99608

Abstract/Description

Notes

With the growing complexity of the issues faced by CTA's partners, and the related key information-oriented tasks CTA has to undertake, there has grown, too, a need for the staff at the Centre's headquarters to be on top of these issues and their implications for CTA's programmes. It's not just the ever-rich diversity of the type of partners with whom CTA works - central government, decentralised structures, NGOs, public-private research partnerships, civil society bodies, federations of farmers' organisations and so forth - but the substantive topics too. Some CTA staff members have much experience in specific areas of agriculture and rural development and are content specialists; others are more concerned with such processes as communication techniques or partnership-building strategies. Some are bits of both. Together - and we're looking at 38 people from 19 countries here - they form a powerful composite whole. At times, though, there is a need for what the process people call 'a lot of facilitating'. And so was born the practice of holding CTA internal seminars, three or more times a year, for all staff. The 1-day seminars are led by external speakers and discussion leaders. The topics tend to be broad, important to all of CTA's programmes whether in publishing, communicating or capacity building. In 2001 and 2002, they included modes of networking, genetic modification and gender and agriculture. Early in 2003, a session was held on 'social capital' - essentially the pooled knowledge of, and links between, the people of a community - and how to exploit this capital. The topics being considered for coming months are youth, NEPAD, knowledge management, participatory technology development and biosafety and intellectual property rights. For the staff of CTA to engage in discussions about the real issues, as part of their regular 'duties', is part of the organisation's strategy of becoming a 'learning organisation' - and a real refresher.