23maynotes

ILRI Strategy Development Discussions: Discussion with Regional People 23 May 2012


 * Present ** : Alan Duncan, Lucy Lapar, Fred Unger, Danilo Pezo, Delhi (Paolo, Nils), Jeff Gilbert, Saskia Hendrickxs, ....

Notes by Peter Ballantyne

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 * What does ILRI success look like for you?**

- research having a 'real impact' on getting people out of poverty, especially smallholders

- 'make our research much more relevant to people with much more clout' - big development players who would do things with our research (eg NGOs). getting our research findings into the practice of govt

- documenting and sharing different models that work

- our national partners in general adopt the strategies and approaches that ILRI is promoting to alleviate poverty

- summary: success is influencing people (big dev players; national partners as well)

- how do we show that? behaviour or policy change indicators are necessary

- really partnering with high profile partners in critical areas where we are working ; too much now with NGOs; need a higher level to get influence. eg, the big players in specific sectors (ecohealth, etc); different partners in different areas (eg with private sector in VC work)

- success is lifting people out of poverty? or infuencing others [to get people out of poverty?] Is influencing them enough ... how do we ensure they do the lifting?

- is it sufficient to demonstrate the influence; or must we also demonstrate the impact on lives?

- quality of the infuencing is important; to make it probably that lives will be impacted

- we need to have a higher profile to expand our zones of influence

- important that we have a track record/reputation to be able to have influence

- thus: profile, thence influence, vary from region to region.


 * What principles should guide ILRI's research?**

- must pay attention to donor preferences; dynamic and flexible [within ILRI strategy/mandate]; must keep up with donor whims; future-proof this..

- how to avoid being too donor-driven? keep proposals/requests 'relevant'; go for regional approaches

- keep relevant to big issues and livestock drivers of change; like climate change, environment, etc

- help strengthen nars partners to do appropriate research

- partnership essential .. to amplify our work; cap dev not an aim in itself;


 * What do you value about ILRI that we want to keep?**

- multiculturality - dialogue with staff - shallow hierarchies, flat structure, easy to talk on all levels - foster interdisciplinary work - porous boundaries between teams and themes [how real is this? seems to be case by case] - CRP approach is helping to break down theme barriers


 * What would you want to change at ILRI?**

- need to strengthen regional offices - need more space to get together with the crop centers [not a problem in india] - how to keep up with the rest of ILRI ..? regional staff can sometimes be working only in regions. regional project strengthens ilri institutional identity - more opportunities to work together and know one anothers' strengths - want to hear more from top management/leadership; on changes, trends, developments. more comms with staff and regional offices - too much admin and bureacracy for more senior research managers; how to avoid/reduce this - lots of frustration with admin systems at project leader level; barriers to being creative - ilri systems are cumbersome, slow, time and energy-consuming - support services that dont support

Strategy thinking so far

- this is our interim definition of success - where is equity? gender, social groups, degree of poverty? is this essential to success at ilri? YES - where is health? needs to be explicit...? - health/nutrition all one? no ... what do we do with health? - what are the direct contributions of ilri to these? specificity needed - Healthy people through healthy animals? - strategy needs to be broader than the CRPs