Stakeholder Meeting CSO/CGIAR Forum

Toward More Effective CSO/CGIAR Engagement
Enhancing Collaboration in Research for Development

The CSO-CGIAR Forum at AGM06: from Dialogue to Action: UPDATE

Civil society organizations (CSOs) - including community-based organizations; local, national, and international NGOs; and universities - are key partners in the CGIAR System. Collectively, the 15 Centers and 4 Challenge Programs supported by the CGIAR work with nearly a thousand CSOs. These partners, by helping shape the agenda of research for development and by enhancing its effectiveness and impact, contribute vitally to accomplishing our shared goals of combating hunger, poverty, and environmental degradation in the developing world.

Nonetheless, much can be done to improve our collaboration, and the CGIAR is strongly committed to achieving this end. For that purpose, a series of activities is being planned, which will take place before, during, and after the CGIAR Annual General Meeting for 2006 (AGM06), to be held at Washington, D.C., in early December.

An Advisory Group on the CSO-CGIAR Forum comprising members of the CSO community is actively involved in developing these activities.

See the information below to find out more about the activities planned and to learn how you and your organization can take part.

Activities for enhancing CSO-CGIAR engagement:

More information on CSOs and the CGIAR

  Virtual Conversation

CSO representatives, their CGIAR partners and others are invited to take part in a facilitated on-line discussion, using a listserv, from October 30 to November 24. The main purpose of this virtual conversation will be to give participants in the Innovation Marketplace and others attending the CGIAR's AGM06 an opportunity to get to know one another and learn about a wide range of collaborative experiences.

An overview:

• Week 1 Virtual introductions
• Weeks 2-3 Sharing experiences related to CSO-CGIAR collaboration
• Week 4 Wrap-up and concluding comments

Time involved: We anticipate that participants will spend up to 2 hours per week in the Virtual Conversation over the 4-week period.

Languages: You may contribute to the on-line dialogue in English, French or Spanish. Postings or a summary of postings in the latter two languages will be translated into English.

Registration: CSO representatives who received an invitation from the CGIAR to attend the Innovation Marketplace at AGM06 have been registered automatically to take part in the Virtual Conversation. Anyone else who wishes to participate may request registration information by sending an e-mail to Simone Staiger (s.staiger@cgiar.org). In your message, please indicate whether you wish to receive all e-mails posted to the listserv or a daily digest. You will receive an automatic reply, providing you with a login and password for the virtual platform.

Communication tools: The Virtual Conversation will be e-mail based, using the address cso-cgiar-forum@dgroups.org. You can also read and make postings by means of a simple virtual platform called "Dgroups." To access the platform, go to http://www.cgiar.org/meetings/agm0/agm0y_stakeholder_cso.html, using your login and password. Have a look at the "People" section to get an idea whom you will meet on-line. Click on the "Resource" section to find information about the CGIAR, AGM06 and related topics.

In addition, you can download interviews, which we hope will stimulate conversation.

  Innovation Marketplace

Their representatives will bring posters to the meeting for the purpose of sharing their collaborative experiences (see description of the required structure and format). Summaries of the posters will be presented in an Innovation Marketplace Workbook designed as an aid to discussion during the CSO-CGIAR Forum.

Up to four of the participating CSO organizations will receive cash prizes of US$30,000 each to fund further collaborative work. In addition, the partnership that receives the most votes cast by AGM06 participants will be given the People's Choice Award (also with a cash value of $30,000). The 46 cases presented will also feed into small-group discussions during the CSO-CGIAR Forum described below. The cases may further serve as a source of ideas for major new initiatives, which should be designed to foster effective partnerships between CSOs and the CGIAR and will be funded on a competitive basis, as described below.

Information on previous Innovation Marketplace events organized by the CGIAR

  Stakeholder Meeting/CSO-CGIAR Forum

This event is designed to build on the Innovation Marketplace described above. The CSO-CGIAR Forum, to be held on December 5, will offer everyone attending AGM06 an opportunity to reflect on and talk about the initiatives featured in the Innovation Marketplace as well as other experiences with CSO-CGIAR collaboration. Through a day of open dialog and creative documentation of the outcomes, the Forum will generate a body of shared knowledge and insights, which should prove important for future efforts to enhance CSO-CGIAR engagement.

The Forum will have three objectives:

1. Finding common ground: Identify research and development goals and concerns that are shared by CSOs and the CGIAR as well as complementarities in their approaches.
2. Sharing lessons from experience: Determine what has worked well in previous and current partnerships and what has not worked so well.
3. Creating avenues for working together: Propose concrete ideas and options for improving and expanding current forms of CSO-CGIAR collaboration.

Participants will work collectively toward these objectives, using dynamic group methods, as indicated in the tentative program.

Facilitation of the Forum - Experienced facilitators and specialists in knowledge sharing (KS) are helping plan and organize the CSO-CGIAR Forum. Because of the large number of people involved, though, help will be needed from quite a few participants as well, specifically to serve as facilitators and rapporteurs for the many small-group discussions that will take place in the course of the day. For this purpose, colleagues who are interested in exercising and polishing their facilitation and reporting skills will be identified in advance, and they will receive mini-training sessions with professional facilitators during the evening before the CSO-CGIAR Forum.

Documentation of the Forum - To harvest the large number of insights and ideas emerging from the Forum will require a combination of professional intervention and broad participation, similar to the arrangements for facilitation, as described above.

Communications professionals will document all aspects of the Forum, based on interviews and observation. Other participants will help document outcomes as well, capturing insights from small-group discussions on paper provided at the tables. The results will be fashioned into a coherent report on the Forum, which will be made widely available in print and electronic form.

  Follow-up on the Events and Call for Proposals

Every participant in the Virtual Conversation, Innovation Marketplace and CSO-CGIAR Forum will hopefully gain something useful from these experiences, such as a better understanding of the interests, views and circumstances of colleagues working in other organizations; new or stronger relationships with potential partners for research and development; and ideas, insights and lessons learned that might guide their work in the future.

During the CGIAR business meeting (December 6-7), a preliminary report will be presented on the outcomes of the Forum. This information will also be widely shared in subsequent CGIAR gatherings.

With the aim of providing CSOs and their CGIAR partners with concrete and significant opportunities to build on the Forum and related activities, the CGIAR is preparing to support significant new initiatives (to take place over a 1-year period), which will be designed to improve and extend promising approaches for strengthening CSO-CGIAR collaboration. The call for proposals will be announced on December 5, 2006, at the conclusion of the CSO-CGIAR Forum. The deadline for receiving proposals has been tentatively set at January 29, 2007.

The Advisory Group on the CSO-CGIAR Forum will participate in the evaluation of proposals and make recommendations about the initiatives to be funded. In addition, a mechanism will be put in place for monitoring and evaluating the initiatives and for ensuring that the outcomes are well documented and widely shared.