Wold Food Day - October 16th

World Food Day Highlights Importance of Resilience in Agriculture Development 

This year’s World Food Day on October 16 is a reminder that building resilience to climate change and other shocks and stresses is critical to achieving food security. Increasing food production alone is not enough to combat poverty and hunger among the world’s most vulnerable communities. Roughly 1.2 billion people worldwide live in extreme poverty, with 78 percent of them living in rural areas where agriculture is the main driving force of the economy. Programs to better manage drought cycles, revolutionize farming in traditionally unproductive zones, connect farmers to early warning data, and promote access to financial services can truly transform livelihoods and break the cycle of chronic food insecurity.

Several of the winning Global Resilience Challenge teams are demonstrating how these approaches can build resilience among some of the world’s vulnerable populations: CLICK TO READ MORE.

A Free Catalog of Low Cost ICTs

Thanks to Tim Barlott for bringing this catalog to our attention.  It includes reviews and ratings for SMS, geospatial, and remote sensing tools.

A training Workshop on Interactive Voice Response for Department of Export Agriculture

Another Freedom fone (FF) workshop was conducted to train the Department of Export Agriculture (DOEA) staff in Kurunegala branch on 28 Jan 2015 at Wayamba University of Sri Lanka. 

DOEA previously introduced FrontlineSMS text messaging technology as part of our communication campaigns. They were actively using the SMS technology to interact with their farmer groups especially sending common message to farmers. DOEA experienced a low texting response rate by the farmers, partly because farmers are reluctant to use texting in part due to language barriers.  However, most interesting thing was after receiving a SMS from DOEA, farmers usually call back to confirm the message and/or ask more information about that. So, DOEA has taken up this insight and wants to test an IVR solution.

They were familiarized with implementing Freedom Fone--a low cost Interactive Voice Response solution (IVR)--for their farmer extension program.  DOEA staff is now well trained to use FF. We put less emphasis on technical background of the FF because they have not previous exposure to the Linux environment. 

They quickly realized the cost benefits and incremental effectiveness they gain from this IVR system and are pleased to use it for farmer extension program.  During the workshop they created a sample voice menu and tested. They need to further discuss the voice menu and content structure design with their administrative personnel (especially with Janaka) at DOEA as they roll out their implementation. 

IVR workshop for DOEA satff