|
Future Harvest Foundation (FHF)
Key achievements in 2003
The year 2003 was a watershed for the Future Harvest Foundation
as it underwent a Review and, at the end of the year, a pause in
its operations. Despite these events, the FHF undertook a number of
system-wide collaborative projects during 2003 and these are
reported below.
1. FHF External Review
As part of its ongoing performance improvement processes, the
Center Directors Committee and the Committee of Board Chairs
commissioned an external review of the Future Harvest Foundation
(FHF) in early 2003. The report of this review was considered at
the May 2003 Meeting of CDC. The Review found that CGIAR members,
partners and stakeholders had a high regard for the media work of
FHF and its website. However, it found considerable divergence of
views on the role and future preferred directions of FHF and
recommended that the CDC consider a number of options for the
future direction of FHF. The CDC responded by re-examining the
functions of FHF and in October 2003 decided to freeze the
operations of FHF for the present.
2. Public Awareness building though Media and
Events
Future Harvest continued to raise public awareness for
agriculture/research as a pillar of sustainable development.
Environment as it relates to agriculture and ecoagriculture were
featured topics in dozens of news releases in 2002-2003, with
particular volume and emphasis during WSSD. These activities were
complemented by policymaker-focused outreach at events held in New
York, Washington, Indonesia, the Philippines, Switzerland,
culminating in the establishment of a type II partnership for
sustainable agriculture at WSSD in South Africa.
Future Harvest doubled its output of Center focused news releases
and features in 2002, continued to widely publicize Center
activities in 2003, and reached some 400 major international news
outlets in 2002-2003. Future Harvest communicates with a web
audience averaging 100,000 monthly and an email bulletin audience
approaching 8,000 self-subscribers, including journalists,
policymakers, and activists from developing and industrialized
nations.
In addition, strategic advice to Centers interested in
solicitations for projects and media relations via the web was
provided and has also helped to initiate and manage the baseline
stakeholder and RM current practice surveys mentioned below.
3. Stakeholder communications and RM perception
audit
In wide cooperation with the CGIAR Secretariat and Centers, Future
Harvest coordinated a stakeholder communications/RM perception
audit (some 275-300 influential policy makers) and a Center RM
best-practices survey. The RM survey was distributed to RM
professionals and was presented to management and RM staff at AGM
'03. Future Harvest also worked via the Monterrey Action Summit
and Ecoagriculture Partners initiatives to establish a new series
of policy targets for countries, donors and stakeholders, which has
led to the Monterrey Call to Action and the Cancun trade Checklist
for the WTO, among other tools for policy measurement and
advocacy.
The media program worked directly on story development, placement,
strategy and implementation both in a leading and supporting role
according to Center preference in 2003.
4. Targeted Advocacy
Future Harvest also coordinated the Monterrey Bridge Coalition and
Ecoagriculture Partners and in 2003 and established and served as
the Secretariat for both the Monterrey Bridge Coalition and
Ecoagriculture Partners type II initiative. Future Harvest
developed Resource Mobilization (RM) strategies for Future Harvest
(FH) programs including a strategy and vision for its operations,
including the Monterrey Bridge Coalition, Media Program, and
Ecoagriculture Partners.
|