The process and outcomes of the Technical meeting

As participants registered they moved into the meeting room and reviewed the “board of partnership achievements”, posted what they had accomplished from the activities identified in the last year’s  technical meeting and other key partnership or networking events/activities they participated successfully in the past year.

After the opening words, short introduction and meeting overview, Mr Fredrick Owino from Kenya gave a key note presentation:

“Some lessons from capacity building for national forest programmes in selected African countries”.

 He presented the variations in nfp process among countries, the objectives of the qualitative assessment and the main points and lessons learned. A short discussion followed the presentation to share experience and insights. The presentation and discussion set the scene and provided a good basis for further discussions during the meeting. The paper with PPT presentation is attached in annex 3.

 

Presentation of country experiences from different regions

The meeting continued with the presentation of case studies on practical experiences in endeavours to assess stakeholder participation in nfp from Uganda (Annex 4)  and Kyrgyzstan (Annex 5). The presentations were closed with the presentation by Dr. Buttoud untitled “Assessment of participatory processes in nfp ; some basic (and also disturbing) questions” (Annex 6). Each presentation was followed by short group conversation to share experiences and insights.

 For each presentation a pair of participants was identified as “listening team” which had the responsibility to identify what works and what doesn’t work in the assessment of the participatory process illustrated in the case studies. The results of the listening teams were collected and exposed on the wall for further reflection and inspiration (Annex 7).

Preparation and practical organization of group work sessions

Before dividing the participants into working groups, a short presentation was made in plenary by Dominique Reeb to define the national forest programme for the sake of the meeting to have the common understanding of what is meant by nfp, participation, stakeholder, criteria, indicators.

The nfp process was presented graphically and three first phases of the process were chosen to help focus the work in working groups. The three chosen phases were : i) Organization of the process ii) Analysis and iii) Programme development. The details of the presentation are in annex 8.

Identification of criteria and indicators to assess participation in national forest programmes

The participants were divided in three groups, each group took one of the three phases of the process and had the same task : to identify key stakeholders, try to classify them in function of their importance and their power to influence the decision, and to propose the criteria and indicators to assess their participation at the given phase of nfp process.

 The groups were encouraged to start with the classification of the stakeholders into the groups of importance/power and to find the approaches to involve each of the group in the process. After brainstorming the group proceeded with clustering the stakeholders, the approaches to involve them and the criteria and indicators to assess their participation in the given phase of the process. In each group a volunteer was identified for reporting to the plenary (see annex 9 for the full results of each group).

 

Plenary discussion

After the presentation of each group, the facilitator guided an open discussion to reflect upon the result of the group work, to discuss differences and similarities between the results of the different groups and share opinions and perceptions on the criteria and indicators identified for each phase of the process (Annex 10).

 As a preparation for the next working session the following focus question was asked to the participants in the plenary :

What are practical ways to facilitate the use of these assessment criteria and indicators?

 Then participants were invited to work in working groups to select few criteria and identify what could be done, when and how to use these criteria in assessment of participation in each stage of nfp process.

 

Identification of actions that facilitate the use of selected criteria and indicators for assessment of participation in nfp process

Each working group selected the most important criteria and identified the actions to be taken for using the criteria in practical way. After the session each group presented its actions to the plenary.

The results are listed in annex 11.

 Review and discussion of 2003 activities and achievements, foundation of the Community of Practice and action planning for the next year

 After the plenary presentation of working group’s results, the facilitator opened the last part of the meeting of the Community of practice with the presentation of 2003 activities and achievements, followed by the review of the concept of Community of Practice for its formal approval by participants (Annex 12). The proposals for next year meeting (topic, venue, organizers) were registered for further development and decision (Annex 13).

The actions to be taken individually or together by the members of the Community of Practice in 2004 were identified in a individual working session and the action sheets (annex 14) were posted by participants on the wall.

The afternoon session was closed by short presentation of the Community of Practice Website  http://www.fao.org/forestry/site/14690/en , the access to the pages and the possibilities of future development for networking and sharing information through the Website.