As always, check out the latest progress data on our Analytics system: http://analytics.digitalgreen.org.  I should note that the numbers of screenings and adoptions of farmers were relatively low during the last quarter as it was the summer season and on-farm activities were limited in many locations. Along with members of the farming community and our new and existing partners, we are looking forward to the monsoon season which appears to be starting up in bits and pieces.

We have been building upon the traction from last quarter and are now transitioning our team members and strategy.  In close collaboration with our partner team members, our team members have established bases in 105 villages across the four states in which we are working.  As we worked to initiate the process of producing and disseminating videos, our team members gained learnings about the rural context, the work of our partners, and the practicalities of mobilizing the community.  With these foundations, we are progressively having our team members transition from the embedded positions within the teams of our partners to regional hubs of our own.  In several locations, we have begun to see that this space affords partners and community members an opportunity to internalize the system for themselves and reduces the possibility of creating a parallel operation.  Our aim is to amplify the interventions of our partners so that they can better achieve their own objectives; however, there is an initial hurdle in institutionalizing a new initiative into the routines of an existing intervention.  Extra time and effort is needed during this initial period, and many of our partners, including PRADAN, BAIF, and SPS, are beginning to hire full-time or contract staff to anchor this transition.  We anticipate that our partners will be able to extend the system even further with the external training and support of our team.

Our new partnerships, including with ASA and ACCESS in Madhya Pradesh and VARRAT and PRAGATI in Orissa, take a similar approach.   We have sought to avoid spreading ourselves too thinly and to leverage the technical support that our team members can provide as well as the aspects of the system, like videos, that can be shared across locations.  We have been moving forward with training programs with the core staff of our new partners as we gear up the kharif season.

To better support our new and existing partners, several of our team members are relocating to new locations and will gradually all move to regional hubs.  Our first two hubs were established earlier this month in the state capitals of Bhubaneswar, Orissa and Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh.  Our team members will be based at these offices and will frequent the field to serve as point persons for our partners – first to understand their existing operations and then to provide them with the necessary technical support to bootstrap the system and to sustain the intervention for the longer-term.

Though they will be withdrawing from their embedded positions, our team members along with our partners will increase their focus on assuring a high-degree quality in all aspects of the system: from video production to mediation to follow-up support to partner- and community-level sustainability.  This will be particularly critical as the number of partners and locations expands.  We have instituted a process of reviewing a checklist based on our standard operating procedures (SOPs) at each of our internal regional meetings on a monthly basis and have identified a list of 21 priorities areas that require special attention for quality assurance.  For instance, video screenings sometimes have been scheduled during late evening hours which community members have found difficult to attend.  By facilitating regular feedback sessions with the community, we have observed that the community’s schedules vary with the seasons and that the timing of the screenings needs to be adjusted accordingly.  We are also experimenting with approaches, like the Sabido Method, to introduce creative elements into the videos to sustain interest levels among viewers and to ensure that the videos screened are relevant in both time- and location-specific dimensions. In the next quarter, we plan to conduct an internal audit on the quantitative and qualitative aspects of the system. 

Two of our current bottlenecks include (1) reduced availability of the video cameras and pico projectors that power the Digital Green system at the grassroots-level and (2) limited Internet connectivity in the areas where our partners and team members operate. 

On (1), external microphones are critical to ensuring good audio quality in our videos but most consumer-grade video cameras that earlier had terminals for connecting external microphones are often being phased out by their manufacturers.  The palm-sized Kodak Zi8 seems to be viable alternative, but it is currently not available in India.  For pico projectors, we have been working with Sima Products to procure them from a manufacturer in China, but we have been told to expect a longer-than-usual lead time for our latest order – the largest that we’ve made till date.  We recently started working with One Media Player Per Teacher to identify a second manufacturer of pico projectors in China which appears to offer units with similar a feature set at half the price.  We also recently identified one of the first distributors of pico projectors in India – very close to our office in New Delhi – but the models that they have from Optoma lack features, like audio output, and are double the price of the units that we have been procuring from Sima Products.  Until the next set of pico projectors arrives, we are trying to stretch our current supply of pico projectors and are using TVs, DVD players, and batteries wherever feasible.

On (2), the data reflected on Analytics is often out of date due to low or intermittent Internet connectivity for those partner staff and team members involved in transcribing data from paper-based forms. To address this issue, our system’s team recently released an alpha version of a data management system, called COCO (i.e., Connect Online, Connect Offline), which allows users to input and access data in areas which have limited or no Internet connectivity.  COCO’s offline mode allows Digital Green and partner team members to access data partitioned based on their role and location and allows them to input data as if they were online.  COCO has been designed to support up to 100,000 users located anywhere in the world and only requires connectivity whenever a user is ready to synchronize their data with the global repository.  Of course, users can always access COCO in an online mode where inputted data updates our Analytics system in real-time.  Built as an application in the Internet browser, COCO requires no additional software installation or maintenance.  COCO has been designed in an open-source, customizable manner and can be deployed without the need of an IT/engineering staff.  Going forward, we’re looking at the possibility of supporting other NGOs by hosting their data and giving them the benefit of not having to invest in and to manage computing infrastructure like servers.

We’ve also been exploring collaboration possibilities with Iowa State University’s extension and outreach department; a USAID request on modernizing extension and advisory services; a consortium led by Institute for OneWorld Health on maternal, newborn, and child health in Bihar; and the agricultural research and extension work of McKnight Foundation in South America.  We also recently deployed a pilot of an interactive voice response (IVR) system with Neil Patel from Stanford University and Tapan Parikh from University of California at Berkeley in Dindori, Madhya Pradesh with our partner, PRADAN.  We are initially looking to use this system to allow individuals who deliver agricultural services to members of a local farmers’ cooperative with a voice-based forum for routing questions to subject-matter experts.  Eventually, we plan to integrate this system with COCO to build unified histories of farmers who interact with the Digital Green system over voice, video, or in person.

If you haven’t kept up to date with our monthly newsletter, I’d invite you to check out the April and May issues of The Nexus.  We’ve generated a bit of buzz lately with some press in Fortune (for Digital Green and also Indrani who is currently on secondment with us) and Ashoka.  We were also pleased to welcome to the team: Shivaji Choudhury to lead our Madhya Pradesh operations as regional program coordinator; Rashmi Kanthi who was an intern in our Madhya Pradesh team and is now with us full-time; and Sreenivas Reddy and Praveen Shekhar who also transitioned to full-time positions in our system's team.

Let the rains begin!

I’m pleased to share our progress for the last quarter -- without having to attach an Excel file.  Our systems team is developing an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to manage and support our operations across India.  Today, we’re releasing the alpha version of the Digital Green Analytics Dashboard built upon the ERP's reporting framework: http://analytics.digitalgreen.org.  This dashboard gives insight to our work in the field and is updated on an almost daily basis, so you won’t have to wait until the next quarterly report to know what's going on.  And, this is just the beginning.  The dashboard will soon allow us to better sort through our growing library of videos, target interventions based on historical trends, and give access to our partners and team members who often operate in areas with limited or no Internet connectivity.  For the technically inclined, the dashboard is built on Google Web Toolkit, Google Gears, and Django and hosted on Amazon EC2 and is currently geared to our use case, but we plan to open the system to enable any organization to adapt it for their domain and context going forward.  Our systems team will share more on these developments as they happen.  

Note: This is a very initial release so you may encounter unexpected issues while browsing through the dashboard.   We’re still in the process of inputting data from the last ten months, so you may come across inaccurate and invalid data.  Please feel free to share your thoughts and suggestions on how we can make it better.

Our analytics dashboard showcases the progress of our work with statistics, but it masks what made these data points possible: human relationships built over time.  As I mentioned last quarter, our team members have been embedded in the field locations of our partners for up to ten months now.  The embedded nature of the team has given us the opportunity to set up models of the Digital Green system from the ground up.  This has led to a variety of learnings that we’ll be looking to replicate going forward.  These include: (1) aligning plans for producing new videos with plans for screening the videos to match the time-sensitivities of agriculture and the diversity of farmers needs and interests, (2) building teams of resource people from the very same communities in which we’re working who sustain the process of producing and disseminating  locally relevant content on an iterative, regular basis through a combination of monetary and recognition-based incentives, and (3) packaging extension services to the community as an investment that they collectively choose to make rather than having individual farmer pay each time they attend a video screening.

These learnings have extended to better nurture relationships with our partners.  With our existing partners, we’re establishing a “model” set of villages where the Digital Green system is regularized and certified according to our standard operating procedures.  We’ll establish 40 such villages between April-June and have already seen some of our partners take greater ownership in expanding the system across wider geographies as they realize the gain provided to their existing efforts.  Some are identifying existing resources – both human and financial – that can be leveraged to sustain and extend the work.  At the same time, we are exploring new types of collaboration – some with existing partners like BAIF and some additional ones like ACCESS Development Services and Action for Social Advancement – in which these organizations will be the main drivers in accelerating the scale-up of the system.  We identified these new partnerships by a rigorous process of receiving applications and due diligence in which we look for demonstrated abilities of domain expertise, scale, and community rapport in proximity to the locations in which our team members are already present.  The aim is to allow us to focus on our work as a “trainer of trainers” to improve the cost-effectiveness of our partners.  Of course, this requires that there be an existing extension system that we can work with in the first place.  And, we’ve been fortunate to partner with organizations that have established such systems and who are committed to enabling real and sustained community empowerment.

Some of our new partners are also engaging the government’s Agriculture Technology Management Agency (ATMA) program which intends to reform the public extension system through interventions like farmer field schools and crop demonstrations.  By working with partners involved with ATMA, we are looking to develop a better understanding of how best to integrate with the government’s agricultural extension system -- one of our visions for achieving scale and sustainability over the longer-term.  And essentially, we’re diversifying our partnerships with organizations of larger and smaller sizes and varying investments that trade intensity and breadth while maintaining our focus on increasing the cost-effectiveness of each partner and assuring quality throughout the system.

We are also starting to see the emergence of leaders among our own team who will be able to take the system further and, perhaps, specialize in aspects of the Digital Green system going forward.  As our current activities become well established in the field, we’ll set up regional hubs where our team can come together and provide the training and support needed in the field on a partner-to-partner and location-to-location basis.  These transitions are already in motion within our operations in Madhya Pradesh, but we’re also looking to provide ways in which our team can grow with one another even as they might be physically apart.  One such effort is The Nexus of Digital Green, a monthly magazine, written by team members from across the country to creatively share their experiences.  I invite you to check out the first edition of The Nexus with short stories by Kevin, Muthumari, and Satyam.  The stories provide a hint of the journey that our team members have taken and the traction building in our relationships with our partners, the community, and with one another.  To share two indications: (1) In January, we conducted a second orientation program in Chaibasa, Jharkhand in which members of our team took charge in getting up to speed a new batch recruits and, (2) across our locations, our team is identifying gaps in our current approach and is working to steadily improve the quality of our intervention based on the framework of our Standard Operating Procedures.  

We continue to actively connect with various external agencies and we recently connected with the government’s National Knowledge Network, MIT’s EmTech conference, and Dasra Foundation’s Indian Philanthropy Forum.  In the field, our team members have been involved in events along with our partner PRADAN in West Singhbum, Jharkhand and Karangia, Orissa where they’ve kindled the interest of officials from National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) and local district administrators.  We’re also uploading our videos onto YouTube and have received some notable requests for content – including one from Professor Norman Uphoff of Cornell University who is pioneering the promotion of the paddy cultivation technique called system of rice intensification.

There have also been some organizational changes: Ravi resigned from his role as COO due to personal constraints and Vinay transitioned to an active role in leading our operations, partnership strategy, and organizational development.  Saureen Shah, a fellow Carnegie Mellon alum and an early engineer at YouTube, joined the team to lead the development of our technology platform.  And, we welcomed our first contingent of six interns who are working with our field operations and our system teams.  Two individuals, Indrani Medhi and Praveen Shekhar, also recently started working with us on secondment from Microsoft Research.

I should note that we are still recruiting operations managers, software engineers, and interface designers!  If you or anyone you know might be interested in joining the Digital Green team, please refer them to our careers page.

It’s been another exciting quarter and we look forward to gearing up for upcoming kharif season.

Y1 Q0 Key Metrics* for June 22, 2009 thru August 22, 2009

* Web-based dashboard to track operations and progress metrics under development

Roundup snapshot

The initial period (Q0) of getting our operations started can be characterized as laying the groundwork in preparation for the larger scale-up ahead.  The attached document attempts to provide a composite picture of our work in all of its aspects.  Our experiences across the locations have sometimes been similar and sometimes different.  As a sort-of a summary, here’s a sample from each:

West Singhbum, Jharkhand (PRADAN): Digital Green’s Field Officers or Assistant Development Managers are justifiably seen as outsiders initially so leadership from the partner is necessary.  And while administrative or top-level buy-in is an important first step, more crucial is acceptance and interest from the execution team.  This is particularly difficult as a partner goes through its own development and reorganization.  Our own team can try to fill in the gaps, but one partner anchor at each district-level location and one sub-anchor at each block-level location must have the capacity and the interest to serve as the primary coordinator and executor of the program.  Over time, these anchor(s) serve to bring other partner team members into the program so that the Digital Green system is truly integrated within their operational workflows and objectives.

Karangia, Jharkhand (PRADAN): The TV, DVD player, battery equipment is too difficult to manage for dissemination screenings that may occur in multiple villages or at least multiple locations within one village.  Some in the partner or the community may offer to manage the logistics, but offers don’t last long – especially in the rainy season – or at scale.  Locking the TVs, DVD players, and batteries on a tricycle trolley (and placing a cover for protection from dust and rain) may be a viable option, but better seem to be pico-projectors which are lower cost (about 50% of the TV, DVD, and battery cost) and much easier to manage logistically.  The luminosity of these handheld-sized projectors is substantially lower than the TVs, but some post-production contrast/color correction seems to provide some improvement and has received rave reviews from many of tribal communities who have often never been exposed to TV or cinema.

Purulia, West Bengal (PRADAN): Just as its important to have an anchor person identified in each partner, it is also critical to have at least one of our team members dedicated to work with each partner team.  We’ve observed that an initial excitement can be easy to elicit. The outcomes are clearly apparent when the rubber meets the road.  Our team members have a multitude of skills – from agricultural experts to computer scientists to development specialists – but sometimes their greatest impact is through their mere presence in our partner’s offices and fields.  That is, they provide the impetus for our partners to follow through on their commitments.  And after the program has been institutionalized and the results are clearly apparent for both the partner and the community, they can become the long-term owners of running and sustaining the program.

Khunti, Jharkhand (PRADAN): Community institution building is a difficult enterprise that takes investment – most especially, in the form of human resources and time.  But, when developed well, empowered communities provide a capable and interested foundation upon which a layer, like Digital Green, can be built upon to take their growth and reach to yet another level.  As some of these institutions grow from SHGs to federations and even to profit-making producer companies, individual community members often increase their level of trust by deriving real value from the intervention.  By bootstrapping on the existing base of such strong community institutions, we are able to advance through various stages of our processes – such as expansion and ownership sharing – at a faster pace.  And on the other hand, where community institutions are weak, we have found the opposite to be true.

 Maralawadi, Karnataka (GREEN Foundation): Many of our partners have tried various approaches in paying the honorariums of the community resource persons (aka. animators, field guides, and mitans) who produce the video content as well as who serve as regular mediators in their communities for video dissemination screening.  Though the amount is generally about the same (Rs. 1000-2000 per month), some establish this as a fixed monthly salary, some as a performance-based honorarium based on outcomes, and some as a performance-based honorarium based primarily on task completion with bonuses for outcomes.  The first and third are still in initial trials by two of our partners, but we have found that the second leads to peculiar behaviours.  When animators are incentivized based solely on achieving a predetermined target number of adoptions, they may completely skip the element of training community members and mediating dissemination screenings.  Due to the incentive structure, they may instead choose to go to farmer fields and make the adoptions themselves (i.e., physically doing the manual work on a farmer’s behalf).  This is why it is so critical for community members to be involved in determining the operational and financial structure of the intervention in their community.  Without at least that basic level of ownership, the community may feel that the animator is being paid by some external source and should serve the community like a sort of labourer.  It is these situations that become breeding grounds for collective bargaining or failures in accountability.

Surshetikoppa, Karnataka (BAIF): Standard operating procedures (SOPs) are currently in development for various elements of the Digital Green system: from facilitation and awareness creation among community groups about the system itself to specific step-by-step instructions on video production.  We work with a diversity of partners and locations so its important to note that there elements of the SOPs that can be customized to suite the operational approach and local context of a particular partner but  there also certain non-negotiable elements to the Digital Green system that would otherwise dilute our processes and, ultimately, our impact.  We walk a delicate balance between ensuring the quality of the intervention while not thrusting upon our partners something that may be perceived as a hurdle for integrating with the Digital Green system.  Our starting point should be the SOPs which should be followed as a rule when beginning a new intervention.  If need be, the initial intervention can be done in smaller, more focused manner to allow everyone – from the community to the partner to ourselves – to validate the results of the system for themselves.  And, if there is a need for some change, we work together with our partners to modify and re-formalize the SOP accordingly.  

Neem Kheda, Madhya Pradesh (SPS): The SOPs define a minimum level of quality assurance, but there is always the potential for improvement.  Our partners have various types of expertise in agriculture, film production, organizational development, field operations, etc.  Its important that we proactively learn from the core competencies of each partner and share the relevant, salient aspects with others in the team.  This is the important way that we will be able to evolve and grow the Digital Green system.  These learnings should be shared virtually through documentation and videos and also in-person during monthly regional meetings, quarterly all-Development Manager meetings, and biannual all-hands meetings.  Of course, though we must strive for the best quality that we can achieve, it must also be tempered by any associated costs (e.g., time, labour, financial).  We must also express patience with our partners and, most importantly, with the communities that we work with to ensure that they are able to grow instep.    

Dindori & Mandla, Madhya Pradesh (PRADAN): Mutual understanding is only possible once we establish relationships with our partners at all levels.  And just like any relationship, the initial days can be mix of highs and lows and effort and time is required from both sides.  The seeds that have been sown in these initial months will soon start bearing fruit but proper care and follow-up is critical along the way.  It’s easy to feel isolated in a decentralized organization like ours where each team member is embedded in a partner location for an extended duration.  Still, through early morning video shoots, late night editing sessions, and socializing during off-hours, our team and that of our partners’ are building the bonds that will allow for both personal and professional growth for the individual team members.  And as long as this is complemented with leadership and process-orientation, we will be able to accomplish our common objectives.

There are many types of partners, but we believe that we are different.  We value the privilege to work with each partner and work hand-in-hand with them.  Of course, our ultimate aim is not just to work with each partner but also with the communities with which they work.  We are working with the community resource persons, SHG members, and communities to allow them to assess the value of the Digital Green for themselves and for them to gain both the interest and capacity to operate the system to improve their own well-being.  

 We are on track toward achieving these objectives. 

A bit of administrative good news: We received FCRA prior permission to receive foreign sources of funding and Section 12A/80G for tax exemption in India.  We’ll still need to receive approvals on a periodic basis, but we’ve crossed this important, first hurdle.  And with Digital Green USA’s 501(c)3 non-profit status already in place, we’re ready for business!

I should note that we were down to the wire with some in our team deferring their salaries 3-6 months, but the stretch (for which our team’s endurance must be commended!) served as an opportunity for birthing our operations before the clock started ticking.

After our orientation bootcamp in Orissa, the team settled into our bases of operation across the states of Karnataka, Jharkhand, Orissa, and Madhya Pradesh.   This has been a period of growth for our team on multiple fronts.  From finding places live in remote parts of the country to learning new languages, this has been a period that necessitated exceptional personal and professional development in our teammates – particularly for those who also just recently graduated from university.  Indeed, four of the Field Officer Trainees graduated again to become Assistant Development Managers with us after passing through a course of 10-day village stays and on-the-job training.  Much of everyone’s time was spent on assessing the status of our existing operations, wherever a pilot had already been initiated, as well to get a better understanding of our partners and the local context.   This involved baseline surveys of basic socioeconomic and information-related conditions at village and household-levels as well as assessments of each community-based organization (e.g., self-help groups, village development committees) to codify measures of history, strength, interest, and commitment to  work with Digital Green.  And for our own team, we recently conducted an appraisal that captured various aspects of technical, operational, managerial, soft skills as well as open-ended feedback on their initial experiences at Digital Green. 

Many of our team members faced the initial challenge of developing relationships with our partners.  This is a critical first step as Digital Green works by amplifying the effectiveness of our partners’ existing extension systems so we need to establish a rapport and understanding with each partner’s location-specific team.  To provide clarity, we formalized operational and financial blueprints that describe how Digital Green can integrate within the existing workflows of our partners and how roles and responsibilities are shared between Digital Green, its partners, community resource persons, and the community itself.  The roles and responsibilities were framed with our partners and define how various tasks may be shared amongst stakeholders or may be transferred among stakeholders over the course of time.  These gave better understanding to the administrators of our partners, but our team found that it is another matter to get the ownership of the implementers of our partners in the field.  This requires an establishment of trust and understanding that only comes with the regular, nearly 24x7 interactions that our team has with our partners as they live and work together.  Our team has demonstrated that it is up to the task with the requisite mix of patience as well as determination.   

One Team, One Mission

The early days of our startup organization posed its own share of hurdles to our team.  Besides deferred salaries, we only recently established a policy to assist in the purchases of motorcycles, laptops, and datacards.  Without this policy, our team was effectively handicapped.  Still, many did experience the generosity of our partners who offered them to hop on their bikes, share computer time, and even stay at their homes.  Coordination has also been somewhat of a challenge with poor communication where Internet is barely accessible on low-bandwidth data cards and often phones are without tower connectivity.  Face-to-face interactions are sometimes the only accessible medium for communication.  The Development Managers are typically on the move, rotating around each location that they support for one week per month.   Meanwhile, Field Officers and Assistant Development Managers also are setting up beat plans to schedule their visits among the blocks of villages in which they operate. 

We have a very decentralized operation in which an individual team member is effectively embedded at a partner location for extended duration.  This introduces its own unique challenges.  Sharing resources, like offices and computers, its possible that one can feel isolated within the shadow of our partner organization and can face elements of frustration as one is physically separate from her teammates and organizationally separate from the partners with whom she is based.  We are working to proactively address such issues with specific organizational development and human resources interventions.  For example, starting this month, we’ll be institutionalizing monthly regional meetings to allow for peer development and to create a better sense of team.  We’re also planning a national-level launch, workshop, and retreat for the team late in the year. 

Still, it is crucial to note that we were fortunate to have assembled a dedicated and smart team of Digital Green founding members who have taken the initiative and made progress in developing relationships, assessing the current situation, expanding on the existing pilot operations, and planning for the larger scale-up in the midst of this. 

Participatory Beginnings

After settling into their respective locations, our team has spent the last several weeks developing context-specific business plans with each partner that detail on a quarterly-basis the roll-out plans along with the financials.  In particular, these plans describe how 30 to 50 villages will be initiated at each location over the next 12 months.  A list of pre-selected villages along with some basic characteristic information (e.g., number of households, number of groups, number of years of previous partner intervention) will be used to group the villages: (1) the regular Digital Green intervention, (2) the regular Digital Green intervention along with intensive evaluation, (3) a control group where our partner operates in its existing mode, and (4) a buffer group for additional extension if resources permit.   In the regular Digital Green intervention group (1), we’ll follow the same approach of baseline surveying and feedback capturing during the dissemination screenings.  In (2), more detailed surveys, with the support of our partner’s subject-matter specialists and thematic teams, will analyze each unique practice being disseminated at a micro-level to understand what specific aspects are being adopted, at what scale, at what quality, and for what duration.  So for example, a practice like system of rice intensification (SRI) may comprise multiple practices including planting a nursery, transplanting, spacing, watering, weeding, etc.  In these intensive-study villages, we will survey which, if any, of these aspects are already being practiced prior to a screening and which specific aspects have been adopted after a screening (or set of screenings) on SRI.  Of the villages selected for (1), 15% of these will be selected for (2) and 20% additional will be selected for (3).

And, the process of transitioning from a pre-selection to actually initiating the intervention in a particular village requires a participatory process with the community, local partner, and our own team.  That is, we wouldn't want to start the dissemination without (1) ground truthing of the actual situation in each village (e.g., for assessing group strength, partner interventions, etc.), (2) engaging (including, the use of a "Digital Green conceptual video") with the community to bring an understanding of the Digital Green system (and its relation to our partner and their own work), and (3) gaining clear commitment from the community in owning the system (from selecting the facilitator to ensuring accountability to selecting a time/place that they will regularly gather to maintaining/rotating the equipment to covering the recurring the operating costs of the system in their local community).

Treasuring Value

One of our primary objectives is to ensure that Digital Green not only fully integrates with our partners’ extension operations, but more importantly, that it is owned by the community institutions that will ultimately need to sustain the program over the longer term.  We have the privilege of working with partners which have invested in developing these community institutions in the form of village development committees (VDCs) and self-help groups (SHGs) but, of course, there is a large degree of variance in their strength and empowerment from partner to partner and from village to village.  Based on a generalized business model devised, a contribution of Rs. 2 per attendee per dissemination should cover the recurring costs (primarily, the honorarium of the dissemination mediator) of running the system.  A contribution of Rs. 3 per attendee per dissemination would additionally cover the costs of the TV and DVD player over the course of one year.  And, a contribution of Rs. 4 per attendee per dissemination would additionally cover even the amortized costs of video production.  In at least a few locations, these community contributions are already being made.  These contributions are kept in a common fund within each group and are used to pay the dissemination mediator and surpluses are rolled-over for expenses like maintenance, transportation, etc.  Its important to emphasize that these contributions are only possible where a strong community institution has already been established by our partner with a foundation of trust and where the community perceives a clear value in the program.  This is why the programming itself must go beyond showcasing agricultural techniques alone and must address livelihoods in a holistic manner from building community institutions to accessing markets to even non-livelihood-related topics in health and education.

 And with our partners, we are ensuring that they share the upfront costs equally with Digital Green so that they too have sufficient ownership in the system.  The negotiation of these ownership- and cost-sharing arrangements was conducted closely with each individual partner and involved an assessment of their vision of Digital Green in their operational areas as well as an appreciation of each partner’s resources and constraints.  In some cases, partners have said that they would support all of the human resources costs and Digital Green would support all of the hardware asset costs because their mandates made it difficult to procure such assets.  For others, they have been willing to share in the costs of each line-item right from the start.  In all cases, overall sharing of costs between Digital Green, our partner, and the community are roughly the same across all locations.

New Hardware

One of the biggest challenges that we’ve found is the use of the TV, DVD players, and inverters/batteries.  Though setup was workable in our initial set of Digital Green @ GREEN Foundation, most, if not all, of our recent expansions are in resource-poor areas with very little, if any, electrical grid coverage and road connectivity with sometimes difficult and hilly terrain.  Typically, 4-6 video screenings per week are scheduled in each village or cluster of villages that share one unit of dissemination equipment among a total of 8-12 groups.  For example, two self-help groups get together and commit to attending one video dissemination screening each week at an accessible time and place.  The video screenings are mediated by a community service provider (CSP) who (along with the groups themselves) is responsible for rotating the equipment among the various dissemination locations each week.  Though CSPs were initially able to find workarounds by using passing vehicles or tricycle trolleys, but the logistics involved in transporting the bulky TV, DVD player, and inverter/battery hardware appear too difficult to sustain in most locations. 

With the support of Sima Products and One Media Player Per Teacher, we are looking to transition from the TV, DVD, and battery equipment to pico projectors which trade lower luminosity for lower cost, lighter weight, greater compactness, integrated media player, speakers, and overall simpler logistics.  We received two sample units of a pico projector from Sima Products as well as a pocket projector from Dell and conducted field trials of the units in West Bengal, Jharkhand, and Madhya Pradesh. 

We've identified several generic characteristics for a cluster of villages in which would it most appropriate for deploying the pico projector.  Not all characteristics are necessary for deploying the pico projector over the TV/DVD/battery setup, but a majority/representative subset makes most sense based on our testing with the sample projectors:
- Disperse villages in which each group is separated by >1 km from one another
- Lack of electrical grid coverage with more than 5 km radius of village
- Undulating or hilly terrain with dirt or poor-quality road infrastructure
- Lack of adequate facilities for transporting equipment
- Smaller group screenings (20-30 persons)
- Screenings in dusk/evening hours (4-8 pm)
- Indoor or semi-outdoor (patio) screening environments
- Villages with minimal exposure to TV/cinema (e.g., <20% of households with personal TVs)
- Paying capacity of community: Where community is genuinely not in a position to contribute or can contribute very little to the cost
- Remote village, where all other situations as per criteria described below is not prevalent but distance from a battery charging point (say, market/town) is too much to manage for twice a week charging.

Since pico projectors are still an early-stage technology, we'll be procuring them on a quarterly basis to keep in sync with the most cost-effectiveness models that are appropriate for the diverse contexts in which we work.  We're also looking at ways to post-process the videos to improve the sharpness and contrast of the picture-quality that the pico projectors display.

New Software

The System Engineering team is currently developing the platform for sharing videos, voice, metrics, and more across our locations.  As a first step, the team is setting up the database that will capture elements of our operational workflows.  Our team as well as the community resource persons that are being trained on video production and data entry will use this system to synchronize their local databases of content that they are generating with the global repository.  The system uses Amazon’s Web Services to store the data in the “cloud” and uses Django’s web framework in combination with Google Gears to provide online and offline accessibility.  The centrepiece of the system will be a dashboard that maps data streams in both geographic- and time-based dimensions with analysis tools for red-flagging issues, measuring cost-effectiveness, etc.  Then, the data itself will be presentable from at least two perspectives: operationally by having a zoom-in/out geographic view of states, districts, blocks, villages, groups, and farmers over time as well as a YouTube-esque view of videos along with view counts, questions, interests, adoption data asynchronously provided by farmers and the community resource persons that record this feedback information during each video screening.  All of this information, with adequate privacy safeguards, will be fully accessible and available on the public Internet.  We’ll be sure to let you know how you can access the site once its ready to go live in the coming months.

A Growing Team

Since the last update, we also welcome three new numbers to the Digital Green team (http://sites.google.com/a/digitalgreen.org/inside-digital-green/team): Apurva Joshi, Kevin Gandhi, and Vinay Kumar.  We’re all thrilled to work with them.  Let me introduce them:

Apurva Joshi (System Engineer Trainee - Delhi; apurva@digitalgreen.org)

Apurva is developing the software/hardware-based platform to streamline the video production, dissemination, feedback, and reporting processes with cost-effective technologies.  He’s remotely guided by Saureen (who's currently with YouTube/Google).  Apurva started some of this work while interning with Microsoft Research and he’s continuing the work to building a production-grade system.  Here’s what Apurva has to say about himself:

“Hi! I'm Apurva. I have just graduated from Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology (DA-IICT) with Bachelor of Technology in ICT. Being an ICT engineer, I have always been fascinated by technology and I strongly believe that it has enough potential toaddress the problems of disadvantaged sections of the society. It is my great pleasure to be a part of Digital Green which is a perfect example of how technology is making an impact on the lives of the people. I will be working as System Engineer Trainee with the Digital Green team.

My hometown is Ujjain (Madhya Pradesh), the city of temples. In my spare time, I love reading non-fiction books, playing tables tennis, swimming and watching cricket.

I believe after the success of Green Revolution, White Revolution, Yellow Revolution and Blue revolution, Digital Green will serve as a rainbow revolution, transforming the lives of the disadvantaged sections of the society.”

Kevin Gandhi (Field Officer Trainee – Madhya Pradesh; kevin@digitalgreen.org)

Kevin is a cousin of mine who was similarly born and raised in the States.  He's working with us for a year -- if not longer -- so it’s everyone's responsibility to make him feel at home to have him stay longer!

Kevin is working with Gulzar to extend the Digital Green system with SPS based in Bagli, Madhya Pradesh.  Here’s what Kevin has to say about himself: 

“Hi!  My name is Kevin Gandhi.  I recently graduated from Drexel University which is located in Philadelphia PA, USA.  I earned a Bachelors of Science in Economics and a Bachelors of Science in Business.  My interests include writing, oil painting, and travelling!  I was born in the States and grew up there, but I have made a few trips to India in my youth.  I have found India to be more interesting every time I come back.  For me, the poverty issue in India and in many developing countries was not only their issue but something to be addressed by the whole world. I did not want to just give money and have faith that it would be used well, I wanted to be involved.  Furthermore, as someone who studied Economic Development I wanted to work in something that focused on long term self-sufficient stability and not a quick fix.  Digital Green’s vision seems to fit that frame work, but it also shows the ability to change and mend with the myriad of differences that such a complex problem involves. My professional background includes working for the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP in their Transfer Pricing, Real Estate, and Venture Capital groups for a year while in college.  I hope to bring my undergraduate knowledge and my creative mind to the table as we build a stronger NGO and a stronger human community.”

Vinay Kumar (Strategist – Delhi; vinay@digitalgreen.org)

Most of the team met Vinay during our orientation bootcamp in Jashipur, Orissa.  He'll be working with us on aspects of organizational development, human resources, finances, and partnership.  Here’s what Vinay has to say about himself:

 “Vinay Kumar brings several years of senior management experience in public, private and non profit sectors.  His expertise lies in assuring and managing exponential growth in organizations.  He just completed over 8 years with PATH as its India Operations Director where he was responsible for transforming it from a 4 person organization to nearly 100 persons and establishing it as a prominent international organization in India. He managed the Asia/Near East operations of IntraHealth International Inc. – an affiliate of University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA in eight countries. Vinay ensured a ten-fold growth in JPS Associates during his tenure as Vice President. He served as Manager at Reserve Bank of India and was a journalist with United News of India and Editor of Indian Management. He was honored by Mrs. Indira Gandhi as the best youngest journalist.

Vinay has an MA in Political Science and M.Phil. in International Relations from Jawaharlal  Nehru University, New Delhi and an MBA from Delhi University. He also completed a management education program from Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.

Vinay loves to travel and has been to most of the exciting places in India and around the world. He loves to read autobiographies and contemporary history besides contributing to newspapers and journals. His wife Neeta works for International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) as Operations Director and his son Shubham is an engineer and works for Cisco systems in California.”

We plan to continue to grow incrementally over the next several months to build the system engineering team, strengthen the operations team, and provide an essential level of administrative and support.  Recruitment continues at pace through our team which has often doubled as our human resources team.   The table below outlines how the Development Managers, Assistant Development Managers, and Field Officers are geographically distributed.  We’ll be looking to recruit candidates with basic- to medium-levels of experience in areas which are under-staffed as well as to provide backup support wherever necessary.      

We have proactively sought the applications of women candidates to establish an equitable gender balance across the team, but this aspect has been more challenging than we expected. 

Explorations for the Future

And meanwhile, we’ve continue to try to spread the word about Digital Green.  Digital Green was presented at IEEE’s Technology for Humanitarian Challenges conference and we’ll soon be talking at TED India.

We’ve also been progressing on our partnership with the "Mobilizing Mass Media Support for Sharing Agro Information" project, which is a part of the National Agriculture Innovation Project (NAIP) and led by Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR)'s Directorate of Information and Publications of Agriculture (DIPA).  We helped in the design of the grant that ICAR received from the World Bank a few months ago.  The project involves the participation of ETV, Doodarshan, and the State Agricultural Universities across the country.  In advance of the launch meeting, ICAR asked us to produce one sample Digital Green video that demonstrates how we can work together.  We produced a video with a Krishi Vigyan Kendra (KVK) in Sirsi, Karnataka and ICAR's Mr. Kuldeep Sharma (who has appeared on Doordarshan channel DD1 every Thursday at 6:15pm for the last ~15 years).  The video will be showcased at a launch of the NAIP project on September 9 in Delhi and will be broadcast on Doordarshan on a yet to be confirmed date.  ICAR is already impressed by the way that we produced this video and plans to produce one such video every month with us in locations where we're working.  This seems to be great opportunity for us to work with ICAR and University of Agricultural Sciences - Dharwad.   They see this as a way to produce something that is more relevant to the farmers themselves.   At the same time, we are also learning something about producing better storyboards and videos since they have many years of experience in these aspects.

Partner News

We also join in our partners in celebrating some of their recent achievements: Mihir Shah of Samaj Pragati Sahayog (SPS) was appointed as Member of Planning Commission, Deep Joshi of PRADAN received the Ramon Magsaysay Award, and G. G. Sohani of BAIF became the organization’s president and managing trustee.

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Evolving GREEN

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There was a hiatus in the monthly reporting during December 2008 due to some organizational changes at GREEN Foundation. GREEN Foundation found that its director of field operations was manipulating its financial accounts -- including taking from Digital Green and even the village animators. Though the director was an initial champion for Digital Green and made significant contributions to GREEN Foundation, it seems that he took advantage of everyone's good faith. GREEN Foundation conducted a series of social and financial audits during the last several months as part of their investigation (which I've previously described here). It seems that he was cunning enough to ultimately convince most of GREEN Foundation's field managers to quit as he was removed from the organization.

It might seem that these events would disrupt the performance of the animators. But, as shown in the December 2008 results, the activities in Digital Green villages (Poster and TV) continued uninterrupted as the animators were shielded from most of the chaos. (On the other hand, there was no "Field Staff Only" results because the staff stalled its work and did not submit its reports.) The cyclical trend in adoption rates, determined by the seasonality of the promoted practices, mirrors that of last December. And, adoptions rates increased from the preceding month. The TV DG villages showed an 54% year-over-year gain while the Poster DG villages performed roughly the same from December 2007 to December 2008.

GREEN Foundation is taking a new approach to its field operations. In the past, GREEN had a sizeable mid-level team of field staff that tried covering large geographies and had a limited ability to establish rapport with the local communities -- a la Training & Visit-style of extension. Now, GREEN will focus its work in 18 villages in which village animators will be developed to become the main drivers of the work. This approach makes sense based on our observations, but it will be important that the new animators have adequate training, management, and support particularly at the initial stage. Dr. Ramprasad is having a hands-on role in this process. A number of training sessions for the animators (from personality and communication skills development to technical demonstrations on GREEN's practices) have been organized this month, and Dr. Ramprasad mentioned that she was impressed by the enthusiasm in the animators that she hopes will be sustained over the longer-term.

In January 2009, adoption rates in the TV DG and Poster DG villages were less reliable due to a reshuffling of the intervention samples. The changes in the sample include: 1 Poster DG villages that became a TV DG village, 1 new TV DG village, and 4 new Poster DG villages. In the next several weeks, GREEN will complete its transition to 18 villages: 9 TV DG and 9 Poster DG. There will no longer be any Field Staff Only villages. Since the animators are now shouldering a greater part of the workload that was previously carried by the field managers, their performance-based honorariums will be raised to a maximum of Rs. 2,000/mo. (Coincidentally, this is the same honorarium level that the animators have been requesting for some time.) The local village development committees (VDCs) will be involved in the management and accountability of the animators, but GREEN is waiting to route the animators' honorariums through the VDC accounts until the capacities of its members have developed a little further. The added responsibilities of the animators include helping to produce one new video each month, increasing adoption targets by 10%, integrating multiple sustainable agricultural practices on individual farmer fields (particularly important for obtaining organic certification to participate in the horticulture marketing efforts), and supporting other GREEN Foundation activities (e.g., developing the capacities of the VDCs, conducting field demonstrations, etc.)

GREEN is also partnering with a marketer of organic produce in Bangalore, Era Organic (http://www.organicfacts.net/organic-stores/india/era-organic.html), to ensure that the communities have economic incentives for going green. Earlier, GREEN maintained a retail outlet (at their head office) for selling products produced by the farmers that they work with. GREEN found that its core strength was working with community and not so much in marketing; linking with Era Organic should streamline the supply chain. GREEN will focus its training on helping farmers to grow organic horticultural produce using drip irrigation kits, polyhouse nurseries, etc., and Era Organic has said that they will come on a regular basis to directly procure the produce from the farmers to supply their store in Bangalore. (This could work out well -- especially since Era Organic's CEO is a lawyer in Bangalore who originally is from one of the villages within GREEN's operational area.)

From the early days of DG, Rajesh and I sought to identify a list of topics that could be captured on video and disseminated more widely. This month, GREEN produced a wonderful manual the details the ingredients, method of preparation, and directions of use for all of the interventions that are promoted in the field: including, agricultural practices, organic manures, crop/plant protection measures, plant growth promoters, improved practices, biodynamic farming, land development, and animal feed. This reference (which has been translated in Kannada and English) will serve as a great resource for the new animators. It will also help to identify gaps in the videos that have already been produced and to ensure consistency in the content.

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Deshpande Dialogue

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Meanwhile, I had an opportunity to connect with the Deshpande Foundation (http://www.deshpandefoundation.org/) in Hubli. They are interested in bringing Digital Green to their "sandbox" in northwestern Karnataka. It’s a unique setup in which Deshpande supports NGOs to experiment with their "innovations" and sees how the efforts of NGOs in various domains can be combined to make a real impact. Deshpande has only been around for a little over a year, but they are already working with 60 NGOs in the region.

I had discussions with BAIF's local team in the "sandbox" about our proposal. The local BAIF representatives are running a unique training center, Graama Chethana, which was financed and built entirely by local self-help groups on a one acre plot in 2001. Apparently, the place is surrounded by barren monocropped landscapes while Graama Chethana is a lush oasis of organic, biodiverse agriculture. Roughly 2-3 times each week, BAIF brings its field staff and farmers from various parts of Karnataka for short training sessions. BAIF has established such a high degree of rapport with the community that many farmers actually serve as trainers for visitors. We've struggled in our pilots with BAIF, in part, because we've had trouble developing modules that could be captured well on video and also in training their local staff as facilitators in the video production process. The Graama Chethana training center could offer an opportunity to bootstrap the content production process with BAIF in a straightforward manner.

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BAIF

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I also made a visit to BAIF's site in Kushalnagar where the video equipment from the Rampur team -- which had trouble producing any content in the face of drought and migration -- finally arrived. BAIF setup its Kushalnagar operations (outside of Coorg) less than a year ago because they felt that it too would be a tough area to work in. Though the area receives high rainfall, infrastructure is poor (e.g., many hamlets are off the electricity/road grid) and the many tribal communities are accustomed to serving as laborers on the large coffee estates of Coorg for low wages while leaving their own lands fallow, etc. The lead for BAIF's Kushalnagar team, Ashok Kumar, has been keen on extending Digital Green for a while. He's a quick learner of new technologies so it was a straightforward process to train him on the creative and technical aspects of video production. Most of BAIF's teams in Karnataka serve clusters of 4-5 villages in which they provide their suite of services to 400-500 farmers. Typically, a 4-5 member full-time field staff, administrators, and a mix of para-veterinarians or field guides are tasked with delivering this intensive support at the grassroots-level. In Kushalnagar, Ashok is managing the entire operation with the support of one full-time field guide.

He's excited about using Digital Green to improve the efficiency of their small team at extending the interventions even further. He spends his days going around to farmer fields monitoring the progress and quality of various irrigation (e.g., farm ponds, trench cum bunding) and wadi (e.g., agroforestry-based orchards of fruit trees) programs. He said that it would be a small matter for him to record his interactions with farmers as he goes through his daily routine and would be useful for the farmers and for bringing greater awareness to the work. We recorded a couple of bottle irrigation and mulching demonstrations related to the wadi program. I was most impressed that the farmers that were doing the work were able to speak at length about the practice with little guidance. Perhaps even more impressively, Ashok was also keen on using MovieMaker to spice up the quality of the content. Hopefully, we can sustain his enthusiasm!

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PRADAN

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I've attached the meeting notes from last month's joint-strategy meeting with PRADAN's teams in Chaibasa, Torpa, and Jashipur. A 6-month pilot is planned from April 2009 - September 2009 during the busy agricultural season. Each team will follow its own operational frameworks and location-specific contexts, but we've fixed a number of key variables to be able to measure impact and to develop a replicable model that can be scaled within these and other PRADAN teams. A mid-term review is scheduled for June 2009 to share learnings from the first three months and to consider a faster expansion of the pilot. For each of the 3 teams, the pilot realistically targets the improvement in the livelihoods of 200 families over the 6-month pilot. The teams are currently producing a critical mass of videos (>40 each) that will then be systematically disseminated in these communities. One of the sites (Torpa) has already begun disseminating the videos on a shared TV, DVD player, and battery backup system in one cluster of villages and the other two (Chaibasa and Jashipur) will be procuring equipment to begin the process in the next few days.

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AKRSP

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Members of the Aga Khan Rural Support Program's (AKRSP) Junagadh-area team visited GREEN Foundation/Digital Green yesterday (February 21). It was great having the AKRSP team interact with Dr. Ramprasad and the GREEN Foundation team as the two NGOs have differing perspectives on development: AKRSP focuses primarily on economic development whereas GREEN mostly seeks to ensure environmental sustainability. This was the second time that a team from AKRSP has made a visit to GREEN. (I've also made two trips to AKRSP's operations in Gujarat with Vikas.) GREEN is interested in better understanding AKRSP and vice-versa. The AKRSP team found similarities in the tribal areas of Gujarat with the villages outside of Bangalore where GREEN works. They thought GREEN's experiences with traditional knowledge and organic farming would be particularly relevant for these areas. Its great bringing together different NGOs, like AKRSP and GREEN, as organizations can often become isolated from one another due to various geographic and ideological differences.

AKRSP has been interested in extending Digital Green in Gujarat for some time, but we'll have to see how best they can integrate the video production and dissemination activities into their existing operations. They plan to organize an initial training session for the a few of their field staff and local "extension volunteers" (aka. animators) on content production during the first week of April.

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Jobs @ Digital Green

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I also visited Anand (Institute of Rural Management) and Gandhinagar (Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of ICT) presenting to and interviewing final year students that were interested in joining the Digital Green team. There was a mixture of uncertainty and interest associated with Digital Green. Some of them had gone through our website, read our papers, and knew about our relationship with Microsoft Research. Others, were intrigued by the prospect of building a startup organization in the development sector. It's rare to have a startup of our kind these days, and many wanted to have a hand in building Digital Green from the ground up.

The officially-mandated recruitment procedures at these institutions (and most others in India) requires speed dating the entire class of graduates (~100), offering positions on the spot, and the recruits making their decision to join within 10 minutes of the offer. Digital Green is definitely not in any position to participate in such a deal/no-deal setup, so I interviewed about 60 students at IRMA and DA-IICT and tried to delay our hiring of these students for some indefinite period of time.

There was also a lot of interest in internship opportunities with Digital Green -- adding on to the many requests that we've already received (mostly from the IITs). For this summer, we've selected one intern, Achin from IIT Kharagpur, who will be based in Lucknow and will work with Sumeet to customize some of the voice-based Asterisk experiments that the Digital StudyHall team has been developing for Digital Green. I've, so far, been saying that we won't be accepting any additional interns this summer because we need to focus on building our full-time staff. Next year, we should have the organizational framework in place to accept a greater proportion of interns and fresh graduates. My visit to DA-IICT and IRMA was mostly just to do that: establish a relationship that we will cultivate for recruitment, collaboration, etc. over the long-term.

One amusing anecdote: The interviews would end with some discussion on language and location preferences. More often than not, the students would say that they don't mind being placed anywhere -- except Jharkhand!

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Moving On

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Next week, I'll be presenting at Tech For Food: http://www.techforfood.com/index.php?lg=ang.

Then, in early March, I'll be moving to Delhi to start developing the organizational framework to take the Digital Green plan forward with our Chief Operating Officer, Ravi Singh, who will officially join the team on March 1st. Ravi has been catching up with our activities by reading through our write-ups, proposals, emails, etc. and we've been having great conversations every week. There's likely going to be some delay to our planned scale-up as we're waiting for tax exemption from the local government after which we can go forward with submitting our application for FCRA prior permission.

Of course, we'll continue our close collaboration with GREEN Foundation and BAIF in Karnataka, but Delhi seems to be a hub for many of our other partners and provides greater accessibility to the northern and eastern parts of the country where we are focused on extending of our pilot operations. Ravi and I will be visiting our partners in Jharkhand, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, and Karnataka during March and April.

I'm currently on a visit through three PRADAN sites: Jashipur, Chaibasa, and Khunti. I thought I would share a trip report on the journey so far..

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Jashipur - Video Production

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The Jashipur team produced 14 videos (see attached titles) which we roughly edited in MovieMaker. I'll upload them on to http://www.digitalgreen.org next week so that they can be viewed by the others.

The team produced two additional videos while I was around. Both of the videos were on the topic of self-help groups (SHGs). The duration of some of the videos (particularly, on SHGs) are getting longer (averaging between 20-25 minutes). As we found when we screened the videos, the actual length of the showings will be much longer than the length of the videos because of the input added by CRPs and the questions asked by the audience. To ensure that the interest of the audience is sustained, its best to keep the videos short and crisp. (It's also easiest to maintain the flow of the videos and to reduce post-production editing by stopping-and-recording to capture only the most critical issues). For example, rather than recording an entire SHG weekly meeting, SHGs can be treated as a general category of content -- much like agriculture -- and can be divided into various subtopics (e.g., late payments, insurance, savings, case-studies, etc.) Some videos can be produced to address the concerns of initiating a new SHG whereas others can be targeted to established groups. The existing exposure program for having members of old SHGs mentor the development of new SHGs could be used as a framework for producing the videos (e.g., addressing the common apprehensions of new members).

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Jashipur - Video Dissemination

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With a sizeable number of videos and plans for an increased video production schedule, we wanted to take the videos back to the communities for their feedback. We had three video screenings in two nights. This was no small feat considering the villages are accessible only by dirt road and are completely off the grid. So, the team hired a TV, DVD player, and a generator (along with its operator and a jeep to carry it all around) from a unique information kiosk shop in Jashipur for around Rs. 300/night. The screenings featured two different versions of video which demonstrated the preparation of jeevamrutha, an organic manure. (We've produced many videos on jeevamrutha with GREEN Foundation, so it was great to see a familiar subject localized in a different context.) Though the villages are relatively close together, some of the communities speak Oriya while others speak Koholo. The Jashipur team produced several videos in each language and the screened videos were selected for appropriateness with the audience.

The experience of the video screenings reminded me of our early days of experimenting with Digital Green in Karnataka -- excepting that the villages in the Jashipur area are of a much lower socioeconomic demographic (e.g., lack of road/electricity infrastructure) and the process of learning how to facilitate the dissemination of the videos was on fast forward mode. Right from the start, the delivery of the mediated screenings and the response from the community was overwhelmingly positive. The first screening took place on the steps of a community hall with about 40-50 farmers in attendance. The second took place under a tree with about 30-40 farmers and the third was held inside an overflowing room of about 40-50 farmers. These were the first screenings in the villages so the audiences were large (i.e., 15-20 farmers is preferred for a good back-and-forth dialogue) with a sometimes chaotic mix of children, drunk teens, unstable power, etc. Still, the CRP mediators did an impressive job of keeping the audience focused and engaged. The mediators paused the 12 minute videos roughly 6 times during each session (i.e., about every 2 minutes) to repeat or add information, ask questions, etc. Even if this wasn't their first video screening, the quality of their facilitation was remarkable. The four CRPs in Jashipur that support Digital Green's video production and dissemination activities were paired to mediate the content (both to offer support for their first screening and to manage the large audiences) and they also did an impressive job of coordinating their interactions (e.g., following-up on points that the other may have missed). There were several queries from farmers in audience that were technical in nature: e.g., "What should you do for fungal diseases?" and "Why do should we use cow urine as opposed to bullock urine in the mixture?".

The impressiveness of the community resource persons (CRPs) was demonstrated in their ability to answer these questions with ease. The CRPs themselves remarked that they had developed their capacity to lead such community discussions through PRADAN's various training programs -- and the fact that they had experience with the practices on their own field. It will be important for the CRPs screening the videos to record the issues raised by the audience so that frequently asked questions can be incorporated into subsequent videos that are produced on the topic. There might also be some benefit to adding additional structure to the mediation sessions -- particularly for newer CRPs. In Karnataka, our team has tried introducing questions that appear as subtitles in the videos: generic questions are used to gauge the interest levels of the audience and specific questions test recall of the content (e.g., ingredient lists and procedures).

Though it was a compact unit, the generator seemed to be somewhat of a distraction (at least for us) because of its noise. The third screening in which the generator was placed outside of the room in which the farmers gathered seemed to provide an environment that was best suited for interactions. A battery backup unit would reduce noise and might also reduce some of the technical issues that were faced in operating the generator. The team will continue to increase their rate of video production and will also incorporate a regular schedule of disseminating the videos in the villages. On my next visit, we'll plan to procure a TV, DVD player, and battery for one cluster of villages (and that will be managed by one or more CRPs from that cluster) to increase the regularity of the video screenings and to simplify logistics. Based on Pradyut's experience, a dry cell battery may offer a decent combination of cost (Rs. 7500/-) and benefit (3 year warranty and light weight). After enjoying everyone else's cooking, I was glad to have a chance to prepare some gnocchi with tomato olive sauce, coccioletti with a pink béchamel sauce, and roasted multigrain bread just in time for the Thanksgiving Day holidays: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thanksgiving_(United_States).

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Chaibasa - Video Production

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My food explorations continued in Chaibasa where Tamali brought me along for a wedding reception that featured a tasty selection.

Unfortunately, the Chaibasa team has suffered for over a month with a broken video camera charger. They developed many storyboards and had plans for capturing many activities during the busy agricultural season, but the technical difficulties that none of us could solve prevented their work. I exchanged their tape-based Canon MD245 with a SD-based Canon FS100. The time away from video production has left the CRPs somewhat unsure of themselves in both equipment operation and facilitation of dialogues with farmers. The team produced three videos (nursery bed cultivation of cabbage and cauliflower) on my first day with them. Practice (and the willingness to make mistakes) will be key. If things go according to plan, the team will produce a sizeable quantity of videos by the next time I come around so we can begin disseminating the videos in a few CRP communities.

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Next Steps

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Tomorrow, we'll continue practicing video production with the Chaibasa team before I head to Khunti in the late afternoon.

I'll likely be returning to the area during the second week of January. Part of that follow-up visit will be to regularize the dissemination process (e.g., by procuring additional TV/DVD equipment) and to ensure that the production of new videos is informed by the community's feedback obtained during the video screenings. Anirban said that he's also interested in checking out the video production and dissemination process in the field on my next visit if we can block the dates.

Sabyasachi also suggested that we organize a meeting with the executives involved in Digital Green activities (i.e., Tamali, Pradyut, and Sabya) and some of the CRPs from each of the respective sites (i.e., Jashipur, Chaibasa, and Khunti) so that we can gather initial feedback about the implementation of the project so far, discuss the strategy going forward (e.g., better integration of Digital Green activities with those of PRADAN), share experiences and learnings, etc. Its great that there are clearly better capable CRPs at each site (e.g., Debendra in Jashipur and Mamta in Chaibasa). It would be worth trying to mix the stronger and weaker CRPs so they can learn from one another.

More later..

(It's cold in north India.)

We converted one Poster Green village (Dinnur) into a Digital Green village last month. It appears that attendance have risen back to a level that hadn't been seen in the village since last June. It will be interesting to see how the rejuvenated interest in TV-based Digital Green sustains in the village.

We also added a new Poster Green village (our 13th) that Gerry transformed into Audio Green. Gerry, it would be great if you could give a brief update on Audio Green. Two adoptions were made after the first 4 shows. It seems like a rate somewhere in between Digital Green and Poster Green, but it's still too early to estimate its relative impact, though. We're using audio tracks ripped from the existing video content. The push-button-based device that Gerry built wasn't being used as interactively as expected, so Gerry has asked the Audio Green animator to try out a standard 1GB MP3 player instead. (Freeman is in China this week, and he's going to pick up some cheap MP3 players for us to play with.) Gerry only has about a week left in his internship, so he'll be working with GREEN's office staff to continue the audio ripping in his absence.

I'd also like to introduce you to Natalie Linnell. She works with Richard Anderson at UW. She'll be interning at MSR until the end of the June. She's interested in improving the interactivity of DG mediated screenings. She's working with the Microtasks team (i.e., Mohit and Aditya) to use their video annotations tool to incorporate polls, questions, notes, textual/visual subtitling, etc. into the DG videos. We'll probably have some Kannada-speaking MSR staff help annotate some DG videos next week. Natalie has also ordered a bunch of "clickers" that we'll try to use to improve audience participation/feedback. Feel free to add more details, Natalie.

Though DG villages did well, non-DG GREEN villages had the lowest rate of adoption (0.8%) for the year. GREEN's field staff is going through some turn-over with people getting married, moving on, etc. Srikanth will be joining AME Foundation at the end of the month. (We hope to continue working with Srikanth as he moves into his new role at AME. AME could be a good DG partner as well.) Our "good guy" field manager (Ramachandrappa) and a cluster lead (Madhu) are also moving to be closer to their families. The DG @ GREEN operations that were managed by these individuals are being transitioned to replacements. For example, only 4 new DG videos were produced this month as Srikanth makes his exist. Yesterday, though, Srikanth conducted a day-long training session with the field staff on video production. A replacement agriscience expert, like Srikanth, is being identified and will likely takeover the lead of managing the video production activities of DG @ GREEN.

I met with PATH-India, Aga Khan Foundation, and IDE-India today. There seem to be some possible opportunities for expanding with these groups. Tomorrow, I'll head to Chhattisgarh to visit partners of SPS.

Next week, we're targeting the start of a pilot with BAIF in north Karnataka (Chitradurga district).