The AMAP-BELO programme and where does SoC/MSC fit in?

Under the AMAP programme, USAID, with the collaboration of Pact Inc., is supporting our efforts to become a more effective 'learning team'. The project begun in 2006 and will end in Nov 2007 but it is already helping us build learning processes and tools that will remain active for the foreseeable future.

The AMAP-BELO programme is helping CARE, Freedom from Hunger, WOCCU and Practical Action become effective learning organisations (there is where the accronym BELO comes from). BELO's conception is based on iterative (or repetivite) learning cycles... learning never stops; it revolves and expands like a spiral.

The design of Practical Action's project, called Practical Knowledge: Learning With and For The Poor, is based on four of these iterative learning cycles or loops:

1. The loop within the Markets and Livelihoods Programme (IA2).
2. The loop within Market Systems.
3. The loop between Mkt Sys (mainly marginalised producers) and the rest of the organisation.
4. The loop between IA2 and other organisations working in pro-poor market development.

So, where do SoC and MSC fit?

They fit in loop #3.

We want to test the potential of well-applied SoC and MSC to make the organisation more responsive to the voices of marginalised producers. We expect that these voices or stories will affect the project cycles, the annual business plans, the country/regional strategies and even (hopefully) our five-year strategies! We will see.

A final comment:

Remember the project of our project? Practical Knowledge: Learning With and For The Poor.

The differences in prepositions are important here; not only a nice name. Extracting knowledge from the marginalised has been a practice that, unfortunately, I have seen in many places. There is no sense of joint learning and no responsibility to feedback what we have learned from them.

'Learning WITH' makes us aware of the importance of a joint learning process: learning hand-in-hand with the others. 'Learning FOR' makes us aware of the responsibility we have towards marginalised communities to build knowledge also for them (downward accountability), not only for our line managers or the donors.

I hope we all, as a team, remember this along the way...