As a perpetually-learning organisation, ASE has evaluated its community training and extension strategy and come up with a new strategy: participatory learning and action (PLA). This new strategy was designed to help ASE develop human capital in the programme areas. As mentioned earlier, it will also significantly contribute to ASE’s efforts to become a centre of excellence in community learning in the country. As per the recently adopted strategy of PLA, the new strategy will comprise five major components: a community learning forum (CoLF), knowledge management (KM), establishing a training centre, community of practices (CoP) and making greater impacts at the national level.

Community Learning Forum/CoLF/

This will be implemented at the grassroots/village level by establishing community forums. CoLF will be utilised as an ideal development forum where the community will raise, discuss and analyse social and economic issues and exert maximum effort to bring about concrete results in their lives. CoLF is an approach that emerged from the systematic mix of the classic FFS approach, the traditional ASE training approach and the concept of functional adult literacy. The CoLF approach was developed mainly to amalgamate the dispersed and overstretched efforts of ASE in training, education, extension and research into one system, which helps to easily monitor impact and progress and has proven to be more cost-effective, in terms of time and energy. Above all, CoLF will be formed in such a way that it will be easy for the CBIs to continue supporting it even after ASE has completely withdrawn from the area. The fact that CoLF’s members will inevitably develop a strong social and economic bond over the years will help them continue to learn and act as a group even after the phasing out of ASE. The CoLF is established at the kebele level (a minimum of two per kebele), and there will be a woreda-level learning platform that may address very specific and special learning issues—issues that the community believes have significant implications to the whole programme area. Representatives of each CoLF will come to the woreda-level learning platform, which is expected to convene once a month, or every other month or so (depending on the members’ decision).

The CoLF, on the other hand, is an intensive learning forum involving 25-to-30 people, who will regularly meet once a week for about three or four hours. The CoLF will have the following five major components:

a) Social learning: The learning topics will consist of entirely social issues, and they will be chosen by the learners themselves. Such topics of global and national concern as HIV/AIDs, gender and the environment will, however, be included from time to time.

b) Participatory research: This activity has three major aspects, the details of which are given under the strategy for participatory research. The two aspects are local innovation-based participatory research and problem-based participatory research.

C) Participatory extension: This can be explained as making technologies and outsiders’ ideas available to the community (CoLF) and assisting them in testing their practicability in their own circumstances. At the end of the day, the farmers may decide to adopt the technologies, or to reject them, or to modify and adapt some of them to their own situations. This is entirely a different approach from the persuasive technology transfer model that the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development is making use of. What is unique about this approach is that it promotes collective learning—as opposed to lecturing.

d) Upgrading agricultural skills: This training will be organised and given based on a needs-assessment survey, to make sure that it is exactly what the farmers need. And it will be given at the programme office level. Each training programme could last anywhere between two and six weeks. A CoLF will be given the right to choose three-to-five people that will participate in the training. When the trainees come back home, upon completion of the training, they will be assisted to start their own businesses in their backyards. They will also be made to serve as facilitators in the CoLF, if and when the need arises. Every CoLF member will be provided with the opportunity to participate at least in one or two skill-upgrading training programmes designed by the CBI and ASE. This is the type of activity that overlaps with the FTC programme. ASE will have to, therefore, make arrangements to use the FTCs and the woreda experts to train the farmers more effectively. 

e) Functional adult literacy: Most of the members of the CoLF are presumed to be non-literate. As such, they need to be taught how to read and write, using the functional activities that they are expected to be involved in in running the CoLF. Members of the CoLF are expected to meet once a week and spend time together for about four hours. The last hour will be used to teach the non-literate among them how to read and write—that is, to execute the functional adult literacy programme. Those who are literate will, nonetheless, be released earlier. 

In addition to CoLF, the Strategic Plan calls for ASE to be engaged in the provision of awareness-raising education. This it will provide at marketplaces, social gatherings (like Edir, Debo, etc.) religious meetings, holiday ceremonies, etc. Using this approach, ASE will raise the awareness of the public about certain issues that it (ASE) believes are crucially important to the audience. The CoLF members will have to, however, be well versed in these issues before they go out to raise public awareness about them.   

Knowledge Management/KM/

This embraces the generating of, the hunting for, storing, retrieving and communicating/sharing of knowledge on chosen themes. All the primary stakeholders will, collectively, be involved in and lead the process of knowledge management. ASE will also be involved in the Novib-initiated knowledge management pilot project (chairing the group) and share its experiences with interested partners and identify, enrich, share and document good, bad and new (GBN) practices, and thereby create a linkage with all the pertinent stakeholders. The broad area of rural development, with particular emphasis on farmer participatory research and development, as well as innovative practices in agriculture and natural resources management and such crosscutting issues as gender, HIV/AIDS and conflict management will be the themes of the KM strategy. Primarily, this approach will be led by ASE’s Head Office to identify and share knowledge within the organisation (programme offices) and with its closest partners in the field. More work has to, however, be done to explore knowledge and practices in ASE’s wider network throughout the country. The findings of this exercise should be documented in the form of a book, special-issue journals, videos, etc. Then they should be made available to the universities and colleges in the country as well as to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research, the Science and Technology Agency, etc.  

Establishing a Training Centre

ASE believes that human-resources development is the centrepiece of development and that it has acquired a rich experience in developing community learning methodologies and tools. Accordingly, ASE has chosen to become a centre of excellence in community learning in Ethiopia and has, to that end, opened a training centre. The centre is aimed at undertaking the following activities:

Thisrefers to the process of social learning by people who have a common interest in some subject or problem and who have to, therefore, collaborate over an extended period of time to share ideas, find solutions to the problem and develop innovativeness. As one way of realising its mission, ASE has designed CoP to work with organisations involved in community learning in the country through the following strategic measures:

It is believed that these strategic measures will help attain the following outputs: forge strong relations/network with organisations that are involved in community learning, explore opportunities, share information and experiences, set common goals, utilise resources efficiently and avoid duplication of efforts.

ASE’s Head Office staff should enhance their capacities to run more projects that may have greater impacts on subjects such as participatory learning and action as well as broader rural development themes, as such projects will improve ASE’s contribution to the national development effort. Innovative ideas that pertain to ASE’s mission and strategic goals should be encouraged to come forth, and ASE needs to approach more donors for additional resources. ASE will have to, nevertheless, handle (implement) such initiatives by hiring consultants or temporary staff for the specific projects. Why? Because the projects will be too many for its permanent staff to execute, given the fact that they are countrywide. To mention but a few, projects aimed at supporting the work of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development on FTC and TVET, knowledge management initiatives at the national level, the project that ASE is currently implementing in collaboration with the Galilee College, the projects on correspondence education and community radios outside the regular programme areas of ASE, the staff training in communication, facilitation and innovation skills that ASE is giving to other NGOs and government staff on request, are just too many for ASE’s permanent staff to handle.