Dear Colleague
You are receiving this email message due to your current or past involvement in activities or meetings related to Seed Security Assessments.
As you probably know, FAO has received funding from ECHO to build capacity in African eight countries (Burkina Faso, Chad, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mali, Niger, Somalia and South-Sudan) for food and nutrition security programming in emergency and rehabilitation contexts on different aspects, including on seed security assessment (see more about the Project at http://www.fao.org/in-action/food-security-capacity-building/home/en/ ).
From the seed security point of view, one way of developing this capacity is to respond to the assessed need of improving knowledge exchange, broadening participation, providing accessible informational resources among the practitioners, and seeking technical support from among a pool of practitioners. The ECHO project is therefore supporting and promoting a new Community of Practice on Seed Security Assessment in four target countries of the Horn of Africa (Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and South-Sudan) to allow seed security practitioners to connect and learn from each other. A similar initiative, in French, is ongoing in the Sahel region for Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali and Niger.
This new Community of Practice is composed of food security programming officers, practitioners and policy makers at the district, national, regional and global level who are active in the humanitarian or seed sector support and development.
The Community of Practice on Seed Security Assessment is email based; you can participate by sending a message to the email address [log in to unmask] that every member of the Community of Practice will receive. The discussions will be initiated, guided and moderated by me.
A first round of discussions will be initiated on today, and will run until July 2014. I will shortly be sending you the initial topic for discussion. You are warmly invited to participate by providing your views on the discussed topic, provide inputs on a specific argument, or raising a question or a need.
We highly value your inputs that will contribute towards a stronger and more skilled community of committed professionals. This is ultimately up to each of us!
Joseph Okidi
Seed System Security Specialist
Horn of Africa (Nairobi)