PARTICIPATORY mapping of agricultural collaborations in Malawi

[Scroll down below for the full VISUAL story]

A first seed action to be further nurtured that came out of mapping the INGENAES Global Symposium and Learning Exchange conference was to use the combined CommunitySensor methodology and online Kumu network visualization tool for the participatory mapping of agricultural stakeholder collaborations in Malawi.

This Southern African country has an agricultural governance system consisting of many layers of organizational structures between the national and the village levels. This can result in collaboration inefficiencies if not carefully coordinated. In a joint initiative by INGENAES (Integrating Gender and Nutrition within Agricultural Extension Services)  and the Malawi-based SANE (Strengthening Agricultural and Nutrition Extension) sister project – both being implemented by the University of Illinois –  a pilot was started to use participatory collaboration mapping to strengthen the District Agriculture Extension Services System (DAESS). This is the country’s decentralised extension framework for enabling agricultural stakeholders to enhance coordination and collaboration. Our aim was to engage in a participatory process of identifying and organising agricultural issues for collective action within and across the governance levels.

The pilot is being co-ordinated by the Malawi conference participants who had proposed this seed action. It started a few months after the INGENAES conference in 2017, and is still ongoing. Pilot activities so far have included:

1. defining a community network mapping language based on the community network ontology described here;
2. creating a seed map using this language to capture the essence of the Malawi agricultural collaboration and governance ecosystem;
3. training by CommunitySense of 10 Malawian agricultural extension professionals in the CommunitySensor methodology and Kumu tool;
4. two field visits applying the methodology to local agricultural communities;
5. a stakeholder sharing session with national Malawian agricultural organizations;
6.  continuing to use and expand the mapping approach at the regional, district, and national levels.

Key to the Malawi implementation of our participatory collaboration mapping approach is that local agricultural communities are owners of their own maps. The mapping approach is being used by agricultural coordination platforms made up of diverse agricultural stakeholders (e.g., businesses, farmers, researchers, extensionists, etc.) who map initiatives within the communities where they work. As most villages do not have electrical power, posters are used to map several local initiatives at each session, thus spanning the digital divide. These initiative maps are then presented in turn to the overall session group by the community members. Symbolic connections between elements that the initiative maps have in common are made by connecting the posters with pieces of thread. The posters remain with the communities, since they are the owners of their own content.

The trained agricultural stakeholders take pictures of the posters, then add the posters to the online Kumu maps when back at their local office. During their next visit, they bring prints of the revised online maps, which can be discussed and further annotated, The Kumu tool then allows for individual online agricultural community maps to be aggregated into new views, so that interesting connections and patterns in the combined maps at the higher (area, district, and national levels) can be discovered. An example could be a certain stakeholder role prevalent in many local agricultural communities, thus that role could bridge community initiatives across villages, regions, and districts, spawning further sensemaking activities:

Stakeholder roles connecting different local agricultural community initiatives

All of this may sound rather abstract.  To show rather than tell about the essence of the mapping process – which are not the map artefacts but the PARTICIPATION process – below you find some photo impressions of how very much alive the various kickoff participatory mapping processes were. They capture the flow (and fun!) of participants mapping together in four subsequent steps: (1) training the agricultural extension officers in the capital Lilongwe; (2) the first mapping workshop with the Kalolo ASP (Area Stakeholder Panel) representatives, (3) the second mapping workshop with their peers of the Mbwadzulu ASP, and (4) a sneak preview of the subsequent scaling up the approach.

Before we continue, you should keep the following in mind: it is very easy to get lost in the cool tools and mesmerizing maps. However, the maps are not a goal in themselves. What matters is how they can help trigger processes of people coming together, better understanding one another, building trust and respect for them to engage in collective action that ultimately leads to lasting change for the common good, and an – at least – somewhat better world. The sense of energy, focus, fun and community that emanates from the below photo galleries, are exemplary of what community empowerment can be unleashed by making the invisible visible together…

So, join us on our Malawi mapping journey…

Step 1: Training the agricultural extension officers

[Click here to see the training slideshow]

 

Step 2: Testing the waters – The Kalolo ASP mapping session

[Click here to see the session slideshow]

 

Step 3: Refining the approach – The Mbwadzulu ASP mapping session

[Click here to see the session slideshow]

 

Step 4: Scaling up the approach

The Malawi case is ongoing, and results are still being written up. However, we hope that – like in the INGENAES conference case – this succinct case description gives a flavor of the community empowerment participatory collaboration mapping can generate. This point is stressed by a quote from one of the district level representatives:

“DAESS mapping provides a remarkable opportunity through which districts and DAES may easily plan and monitor the performance of the system in relation to delivery of extension services. The more people are oriented and the sooner the approach is rolled out to other districts, the more DAESS will become a force/system to reckon in the councils and at national level.”

Capturing the mood at the end of the stakeholder meeting in Lilongwe where the initial results were presented

Acknowledgments

The Malawi mapping project was partially supported financially by USAID.  Many thanks to SANE, the local pilot project team, in particular Stacia Nordin, the Lilongwe and Mangochi DAESS and the Kalolo and Mbwadzulu communities for their contributions and enthusiastic participation in helping to make this methodology their own, and sharing their stories. Pictures taken by Aggrey Mfune, Stacia Nordin and Aldo de Moor.

For a more detailed description of this case, see this recent journal article.

Community network mapping: just get going!

Mapping a community network is an art as much as a science. Solid methodology is important for professional purposes, of course (see for heavy-duty mapping processes the CommunitySensor methodology for participatory community network mapping). Still, don’t let the need for formalized process get in the way of starting to make more sense of your own community. Rather than waiting until you have it all figured out,  just get going and get your mapping hands dirty. No need to use fancy tools, just start capturing and reflecting upon what you see, using only a sheet of paper, if need be. You can always convert those paper representations into electronic form later.

Mapping a local farming community initiative in Kalolo, Malawi, September 2017

Asking the right questions

Here are some of the key questions useful for starting your own community network mapping process. Starting point in your analysis should be the interactions that make up the community. You can’t simply “declare a community to be”:a thriving, healthy community is an evolving network of vibrant interactions. Here are some of the key aspects of these community interactions to be mapped:

• What are key community interactions? These include activities, workflows, business processes, initiatives, projects or whatever else you call the dynamics that make your community tick.
• What goals or themes are the interactions about? Interactions don’t just happen, they serve a purpose. These purposes give meaning to the way the community works and grows. Such purposes can be very concrete, like a specific objective with a set deadline. A purpose, however, can also be a much more fuzzy theme, such as “contributing to culture and heritage” (see, for instance, how we used the EU URBACT “urban topics” to map and connect European social innovation iniatives).
• Which participants are involved in starting, doing, and evaluating these interactions? Participants can be individual persons, roles people play, organizations, networks, or even other communities. Don’t just look at those involved in doing the interaction, but also those participants who play a role in getting the interactions going, and interpreting their outputs and outcomes.
• What key content  is being used/produced in what interactions? Don’t try to map all bits and pieces of information. Instead, focus on core content (such as important resources, products, and stories that act as collaborative bridges between participants and interactions.
• Which online and physical tools are being used to support the interactions? Don’t just look at the fancy “digital community tools”. A face-to-face meeting in a village center is also a tool, and a very powerful one at that!
• What are the links between the interactions? One major issue caused by today’s communication overload is that we start to lose the context of our interactions. Don’t just map the interactions themselves, but also how they interconnect. For example, does the completion of one interaction cause another one to start? Should participants of one interaction at least be aware of the outputs of another interaction?
• What are important quality aspects of the elements and connections mapped?  Think, for instance, of  aspects like priority, timeliness, legitimacy and acceptability that indicate how to interpret specific parts of your map. These quality aspects are important triggers for productive sense-making conversations following the making of the map.

Tips & tricks to get started

• Map making is expensive. Think carefully about in what level of detail you are going to model elements and connections, and when you need to update the map. Capturing less is more.  Try to follow natural reporting rhythms, instead of making the provision of mapping data an extra chore.
• Reuse existing data (e.g. from spreadsheets or organizational documents) when making your map. However, don’t limited yourself to what data is ready at hand. Often, the most useful data is still in the heads of community members.
• Maps are a means, not an end. The mapping process does not end when a version of the map has been produced, but only really starts then. Use (relevant parts of) the maps by referring to them in meetings, workshops, and online conversations. Share links to relevant parts in social media. In this way, continue to make sense with the community stakeholders.
• Communities and social networks overlap. There is a continuum between the social networks and communities making up community networks. Social networks are about relationships,  interactions, and connections between people and act as a resource for knowledge sharing and problem solving. Communities refer to developing a shared identity around a theme and collectively learn and develop knowledge about it (see Team BE for a great explanation).  No communities can flourish without being embedded in multiple social networks. Vice versa, out of social networks, communities often naturally emerge. Don’t try to make artificial distinctions between the two types of collectives. Just keep looking for interesting “densifications” in the community network map, and leave the conceptual nitpicking to academics 🙂
• Iterate, iterate, and re-iterate. Mapping is never done. It is never complete, nor ever completely accurate. That doesn’t matter. Community network mapping is about boosting participation, creating a sense of community and empowerment. It is much more about the process than about the artefact. Make the process work. Get people to smile, their eyes to sparkle, and their mouths to talk. That’s when you know your mapping work is taking off!

Collaboration Patterns as Building Blocks for Community Informatics

From 4-6 November 2009, the 6th CIRN Community Informatics Conference was held in Prato, Italy. As in previous years, the conference brought together an interesting mix of researchers and practitioners from North and South, discussing ways to effectively use information and communication technologies to foster community building. This year’s theme was “Empowering Communities: Learning from Community Informatics Practice”.

I gave a keynote address at the conference. Title of my talk and the accompanying paper was “Collaboration Patters as Building Blocks for Community Informatics”. Below the slides of the presentation and the abstract of the paper.

Abstract

Community Informatics is a wide-ranging field of inquiry and practice, with many paradigms, disciplines, and perspectives intersecting. Community informatics research and practice build on several methodological pillars: contexts/values, cases, process/methodology, and systems. Socio-technical patterns and pattern languages are the glue that help connect these pillars. Patterns define relatively stable solutions to recurring problems at the right level of abstraction, which means that they are concrete enough to be useful, while also sufficiently abstract to be reusable. The goal of this paper is to outline a practical approach to improve CI research and practice through collaboration patterns. This approach should help to strengthen the analysis, design, implementation, and evaluation of socio-technical community systems. The methodology is illustrated with examples from the ESSENCE (E-Science/Sensemaking/Climate Change) community.

http://growingpains.blogs.com/home/2008/11/moving-community-informatics-research-forward.html

Moving Community Informatics Research Forward

The latest issue of the Journal of Community Informatics contains my point of view on “Moving Community Informatics Research Forward”. In it, I argue that at least four aspects need to be taken into account when researching the interplay of communities and their technologies: contexts/values, cases, process/methodology, and systems. Furthermore, in order to move our research field forward, more systematic attention needs to be paid to the role of definitions, the identification of lessons learnt and the development of testbeds and collaboratories. The point of view is based on my conference summing up of the Prato 2008 Community Informatics & Development Informatics conference.