IMPACT-L Archives

Moderated conference on impact assessment of agricultural research: May 2014

Impact-L@LISTSERV.FAO.ORG

Options: Use Classic View

Use Monospaced Font
Show Text Part by Default
Show All Mail Headers

Topic: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]

Print Reply
Mon, 2 Jun 2014 15:38:57 +0200
text/plain (42 lines)
Dear Colleagues,

The last messages have just been posted (numbers 106 to 109), so this FAO conference on "Approaches and methodologies in ex post impact assessment of agricultural research: Experiences, lessons learned and perspectives" is now officially closed.

I would like to sincerely thank all of you who participated actively in this conference. My impression is that there is a very large demand for clear and easily-accessible knowledge about how to best assess the impacts that agricultural research is having on people's lives, their communities and their countries, and that a large number of people joined this conference in order to learn and to get an updated overview about this complex and fast evolving area. So, a big thanks to those of you who made this possible by dedicating your time and effort to sharing your knowledge, ideas, experiences and viewpoints with the rest of us.

The Background Document to the conference is available on the web at http://www.fao.org/docrep/019/as549e/as549e.pdf (120 KB). All of the messages posted so far are available on the web, at https://listserv.fao.org/cgi-bin/wa?A0=Impact-L and, in chronological order, https://listserv.fao.org/cgi-bin/wa?A1=ind1405&L=Impact-L&O=D&H=0&D=0&T=1 . The message archives are searchable, with a 'free text' search button on the right hand side of the webpage.

A summary document from the conference will soon be prepared and sent to all of you.

In the meantime, I can provide a brief summary about participation.

The conference ran from four weeks. The number of people who subscribed themselves was under 500 on 5 March when the conference began and it rose to 618 people on 1 June when the conference finished. Of these, 59 people (i.e. 10%) submitted at least one message. People were asked to introduce themselves in their first message and they typically provided their full work address and a description of their professional background and current occupation. Based on the address, an analysis was carried out of participation by country, geographical area and work place. Note, the analysis is based on where people were living when they posted the message and does not indicate where they come from originally.

Of the 109 messages, 30% came from people living in Africa; 29% from Europe; 15% from Asia; 13% from Latin America and the Caribbean; 7% from North America and 6% from Oceania. A total of 63 messages (i.e. 58%) were posted by people living in developing countries.

The messages came from people living in 38 different countries. The greatest number came from people living in Uruguay, Switzerland, the United States of America, Australia, Ghana, India, Hungary, Indonesia, Italy, the Netherlands, Kenya and Nigeria (all with four messages or more).

Participants in the conference also came from a wide range of work environments. Of the 109 messages, 25% were from people working in universities; 23% from national research centres; 22% from independent consultants; 14% from people working in the international agricultural research system (mostly CGIAR centres); 7% from people working in inter-governmental organizations (mostly FAO); 5% from non-governmental organizations and 5% from people working in Government ministries or Government bodies.

We hope that you found this conference informative, interesting and that, like me, you learned a lot from the very many excellent messages prepared by the participants.

To conclude, I would like once again to thank all of the 59 people who sent in their messages to the conference.

With best wishes

John

John Ruane, PhD
Research and Extension Unit,
UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO),
Viale delle Terme di Caracalla,
00153 Rome, Italy
E-mail address: [log in to unmask]
Web: http://www.fao.org/nr/research-extension-systems/en/
IMPRESA: http://www.impresa-project.eu/

########################################################################

To unsubscribe from the Impact-L list, click the following link:
https://listserv.fao.org/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=Impact-L&A=1

ATOM RSS1 RSS2