The AAR of Journeys of Joy: the EMPHASIS India Knowledge Fair

[Dr. E. Mohamed Rafique]

I request every member who was at the EMPHASIS India Knowledge Fair to fill in their perspectives into the AAR and some one to translate into Hindi as my daughter Ayesha is now in Kochi!

 

What strengths did we see?

• Community Representatives who were coming for the first time able to interact freely and share.
• Most of us had dreams, that EMPHASIS would be owned by the Community in 2014
• All participants are very engrossed in the five thematic discussions namely: Livelihoods, ID Cards, Sustainability, Access to Services, and Safe Mobility.
• Everyone in the EMPHASIS team knows how to do a SALT visit, and how to make a person Dream
• The SALT visits helped the mobile communities as they said that facilitators revealing strengths again and again amongst them helped them to have faith in their own selves.
• Also the SALT visits helped the Delhi mobile communities to meet and know about the other EMPHASIS teams that were working in the transit areas like Gaurifanta, Banbasa, and Petropole, also from other destination sites like Kolkata and Mumbai.
• We were able to translate most of what was said in English to Hindi and what was said in Hindi to English. Manita, Sandeep, Surajit, Anupam, Moushmi, Rituu, Nabesh, and GK, deserve mention
• We have many dance and musical talents in our team: Surajit, Priyobrito, and Bhupender
• We can handle emergency logistics

 

What were the instances where we worked as a Team?

• Arranging the photo-storys of the "Journeys of Joy"
• The five teams within EMPHASIS helped each other too.
• There was good coordination between the UN KMP Team, the India Competence Team and the Five EMPHASIS teams
• Please fill in Team work at the SALT Visits...
•  We were able to hold a Knowledge Fair by working as a Team

 

What did we learn?

• Knoweldge Fair becomes more meaningful with richer learning when communities participate as seen here in Delhi and in February in Kumta where apart from local communities, communities from other states of India also participated.
• While services, resources etc are important, community mobilisation is the first key step. Stimulating local response is essential for effective projects or programs.
• Modify the agenda as per needs of the participants
• Got deeper insight into issues of migrants
• So many things strengths of the EMPHASIS team- professionalism, hard work, creative talents, fun loving , team spirit...
• India competence team is strong with deep commitment to community response
• Russian team very attentive listeners
• The political and social scenario in Russia
• Try out new ways to do KF; the appeal of posters, involvement of Solution Exchange team
• There was always something different to appreciate in every team. Thus all the five teams got the first prize in five different themes.
• Every member in the team is equally important.
• We must remove half the items from the proposed program, then only we can have enough time for discussion.
• Most of us want to be confident about the fundamentals of CLCP, before we discuss Self Assessment, Action Planning, Measurement of Change, River Diagram, Stairs Diagram, Transfer, Knowledge Management, and Knowledge Assets.
• However much we share our strengths, our experience and our success stories, the skeptics amongst us will always have questions, doubts, or  argue endlessly.

 

How can we do it better next time?

• We must have better time management and include AAR of the whole KF in the program.
• We can find out from those who stall the agenda what is it they fear about WOT, WOW,  Action Planning, Measurement of Change, River Diagram, Stairs Diagram, Transfer, Knowledge Management, and Knowledge Assets?
• We can find out better methods to ensure that the Senior Most Management of CARE India at least attend the KF.
• It was a happy moment for the EMPHASIS team to see Kuldeep's landscape which was good. So happy, that we forgot to take a group photo of all the participants :-(

 

Download References:

Agenda for Knowledge Fair

or http://tinyurl.com/3zatvm5

KNOWLEDGE FAIR.ppt

or http://tinyurl.com/3u4m22n

[Dr. E. Mohamed Rafique]

Dear Prabakar, and Rituu,

Would like to know if this format of AAR is the one that Prabakar suggested? I suspect that some changes must have crept in when I wrote down from memory  :-)

With best regards,

[Dr. E. Mohamed Rafique]

Dear Rituu,

Your additional points to "what did we learn" are quite different from mine, maybe because I am an insider. Hence, I have put them first in the blog :-) The blog looks better now.

 

[Rituu B. Nanda]

Dear Rafique,

 

I would like to add under this heading:

What did we learn?

• Knoweldge Fair becomes more meaningful with richer learning when communities participate as seen here in Delhi and in February in Kumta where apart from local communities, communities from other states of India also participated.
• While services, resources etc are important, community mobilisation is the first key step. Stimulating local response is essential for effective projects or programs.
• Modify the agenda as per needs of the participants
• Got deeper insight into issues of migrants
• So many things strengths of the EMPHASIS team- professionalism, hard work, creative talents, fun loving , team spirit...
• India competence team is strong with deep commitment to community response
• Russian team very attentive listeners
• The political and social scenario in Russia
• Try out new ways to do KF; the appeal of posters, involvement of Solution Exchange team

Rituu