We, as communications folks, are often too shy. We do extra-ordinary things, but either we don’t realize it ourselves, or are too timid to showcase them. And yet, others might learn from our experience.
In the next GFAR webinar, we want to showcase “Communications Success Stories”: projects we have done, and made us proud, while hoping it will inspire others.
We’re ever so fortunate to feature a number of speakers who stepped forward, to showcase their communicators success stories. They all come from a different background and approached “communications” from diversified entry points: they will talk about their events, their personal struggles, ways to increase their audience, their conferences and online campaigns…
Join us!
Webinar: “Communications Success Stories”
Date: Tuesday September 12th – at 13:00 Rome time
Duration: 2.5 hours
(Use this tool helps you convert “Rome time” to your timezone)
This webinar is a collaborative effort: our panel of professional communicators worked together to share their experiences and approaches, their trials and errors.
We will give ample opportunity for all webinar participants to join into the discussion, either to share their own experiences, hints and tricks, or to ask questions to the speakers, or to the entire group.
Our speakers:
Michael Victor is a communication, knowledge management and policy engagement specialist with more than 20 years of experience delivering on strategic communications, production of high value knowledge products, and facilitating multi-stakeholder learning and dialogue processes in the agriculture and natural resource management sectors.
Michael now works for the Agro-Biodiversity Initiative (TABI).
Kathryn M.Clifton works on fostering new approaches to ICT for development at the Catholic Relief Services (CRS), documenting learning, and assisting in communications.
Prior to this role Kathryn worked in implementing technology in agriculture programming.
She is passionate about sustainable business models and approaches.
Kwesi Atta Krah is the Director, Country Alignment and Systems Integration, at IITA. He assumed this position in January 2017. Prior to this, he was Executive Director of Humidtropics, a CGIAR Systems Research Program. Earlier, Dr. Atta-Krah served as Deputy Director General of Bioversity International in Rome, from 2005 to December, 2013. While in Rome, he also served as the Chair of the International Alliance Against Hunger and Malnutrition, in partnership with FAO, WFP and IFAD. He holds BSc. in Agriculture (Crop Science) from the University of Ghana (1977), and M.Sc and PhD degrees in Natural Resources Management, from the University of Ibadan in Nigeria (1984). His professional interests and expertise spans Food Security and integrated systems research aimed at livelihoods enhancement for smallholder farmers. He has several publications in technical journals and contributed to a number of books.
Anne Wachira works at the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) in Nairobi, Kenya where she is responsible for managing social media and website content.
Anne started her career as an IT generalist before settling for web and content development.
She has a passion for market insights and consumer behavior.
Alpha Sennon is a Tribagonian farmerpreneur, motivational speaker and agri-youth advocate. Alpha is the founder of WHYFARM (“We Help You-th Farm”) a globally recognised and award-winning nonprofit organisation established to creatively promote agriculture among children by increasing their awareness of the world’s food problems and by doing so grow the future feeders of 2050
In 2015, Alpha, discontented with the lack of growth and support for youths in the agriculture sector, started a mission to reposition and rebrand the agriculture industry through his invention AGRIman – the world’s first and only Superhero for food and nutrition security. AGRIman is part of a tangible on the ground engagement campaign that teaches children the importance and how they can contribute towards achieving food and nutrition security. WHYFARM has since been launched in 9 countries worldwide, including 5 countries in Africa.
Elizabeth Sharma is a Senior Associate at Marchmont Communications, a boutique communications agency specialising in global development issues. She has managed the account for the sustainable agriculture coalition Farming First for four years.
In 2016, Farming First’s “Story of Agriculture and the Sustainable Development Goals” won two industry awards for non-profit communications.
Boris Rantaša is a forestry engineer, working as an Independent advisor the Slovenia Forest Service. His main occupation is working on international projects, where he manages and takes part in communication, dissemination and outreach activities. He is an active blogger and an on- and offline editor (see Handbook for Learning and Play in the Forest). He is going to present the recipe for the success story of the communication campaign for the European Forum on Urban Forestry 2016 in Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Camilla Vote is a Research Fellow at Charles Sturt University based in Lao PDR. With a background in agricultural and natural resource management, her current research focus (and day job) is the investigation of soil and water management strategies to shift from the monoculture of rice production to dry season field/horticultural crops within the lowland systems of Cambodia and Laos.
Since her work began within the R4D context 5 years ago, she has seen traditional methods and tools of extension (e.g. farmer field days, pamphlets, booklets etc.) rolled out again and again, with very little uptake of technologies that result from various projects. As such, she and her colleagues devised an ‘edutainment’ program of clowns and magic to be performed in schools in hope of reaching family members not often involved in the research or extension process, but who nonetheless play an important role in terms of receiving and communicating information (e.g. children) and household decision making (e.g. women).
Dr Mahesh Chander, PhD in Agricultural Extension Education, is currently Principal Scientist & Head, Division of Extension Education at ICAR’s Indian Veterinary Research Institute. He has been actively associated with research, teaching, training, extension & developmental activities concerning agricultural extension education for over 25 years. He has guided nearly 30 masters and doctoral students. He is a social media enthusiast using Facebook and WhatsApp extensively, and has written blogs for GFAR, YPARD, AESA, & GFRAS. Given his engagement with social media, recently he has been asked to coordinate social media activities of his organisation.
Calum MacKichan is Publications Officer at the European Plant Science Organisation (EPSO) and is a Global Coordinator of the Fascination of Plants Day, a global celebration of plant science that reaches all continents.
He is chair of Communication for the Marie Curie Alumni Association, was on the Steering Committee of the Science March Brussels, and holds a PhD in Microbiology
Peter Casier is an online media consultant for nonprofit organisations. He loves to hang out in spaces and places “where few have gone before”, experimenting on the edge of things, but always “for the greater good”.
Peter is originally trained as a printing engineer, worked as a software developer, systems engineer, telecoms technician and for 16 years supported the UN humanitarian interventions across the globe. He is also our resident GFAR Community Coordinator.
Register now!
You can register for this webinar by sending a simple email to Peter Casier – peter.casier(at)fao.org
Please mention the title of the webinar you want to participate in, your name, affiliation (organisation/institute) and function.
We will send you a confirmation email. You will get a reminder with the technical details to join the webinar, one day before the event.
Register fast! Our webinars are limited to 100 participants and the available “seats” are often taken in a matter of days. We encourage participants to actively engage in our webinars with feedback, questions, and sharing of their own experiences.
About the GFAR webinars
We, at GFAR strongly believe in the power of communications to bring – with our partners – our common messages to the public, and to network within our own communities and with our stake holders. That’s why we continuously support trainings, workshops and webinars on communications.
While the webinars are organised by GFAR, they are collaboratively built with the speakers, often presenting the work of GFAR partners. As such, the webinars are by themselves a proof how we catalyze between our partner organizations -and others- to work together towards shared GFAR goals. If your organisation is not a GFAR partner yet, join now!
Attendance to our webinars is open to GFAR partners as well as other nonprofit organisations or individuals working in the area of agriculture, ecosystems and sustainable development. Our webinars are mostly attended by scientists, students, communications staff as well as a wide variety of agricultural practitioners.
We do not ask for a participation fee, but we like all participants to actively engage into the online discussion during the webinar.
The webinars are moderated via BlueJeans, an online tool running within any internet browser. It only requires participants to have a good and reliable Internet connection and a computer/tablet running any browser.
Topics of our past GFAR communications webinars include:
“Participatory communications and uptake communications”
“Participatory video”
“Email based newsletters”
The challenge of internal communications
“Building a bridge between scientists and communicators”
“An introduction to social media”
“How to read updates from hundreds of websites, easily”
“How to define and measure your social media performance”
“How to find and use pictures for your websites”
“Basic Search Engine Optimization”
“The Art of Website Revamps”
“The Crystal Ball: Predicting the future of online media”
“Farm Radio, Community Radio and Participatory Radio”
Picture courtesy MaxPixel
blog.gfar.net 