SIAS organized a “Capacity-Building Workshop” for the team members of the “Co-producing a shock-resilient business ecosystem for women-led enterprises in Nepal” (CREW) project on May 9-10, 2022. The two-day residential workshop was organized in Nagarkot and brought together the entire project team with the intent to build a common understanding of the project, explore and refine the concepts of co-production, reflect and share the findings collected until then and plan way ahead for the project. 19 participants comprising project team members from SIAS and representatives from project partners- Aria Solutions, Himalayan Bio-Trade Pvt. Ltd. (HBTL) and NIMS College participated in the workshop.
The workshop was divided into two days, and the sessions were planned accordingly. The first day consisted of sessions on project introduction and a revision of the conceptual framework. One of the most important parts of the workshop was gaining clarity on the concept of co-production, an integral part of the project. Dr. Mani Ram Banjade, Principal Investigator (PI) of the project, led the session on it and presented the concepts and strategies of co-production. This was followed by group work, where the participants were divided into four groups. Each group picked a specific activity under the project outcomes and discussed and presented how co-production can take place in different phases. This interactive activity was effective for the participants to better understand the concept of co-production and materialize it for future project planning and activities.
Afterwards, Mr. Bibhor Kayastha from Aria Solutions gave an interesting presentation on the topic, “Co-production in marketing and branding” and shared the strategies planned for the marketing and branding of legumes of Ramechhap. This was followed by a presentation from Dr. Siddhartha Mainali on the topic “Making sense of quantitative data”. In his session, he summarized quantitative data and explained its purpose in the CREW project. Dr. Mainali also shared and explained the sample questionnaire of the quantitative data.
The first day’s session concluded with a final presentation from Dr. Meeta S. Pradhan, Co-Principal Investigator (Co-PI) on, “Gender-sensitive research, fieldwork and workplaces”. Here, the discussion was centralized on creating safe spaces for respondents during fieldwork and for project staff in the office and in the fields.
The workshop’s second day officially started with the previous day’s recap from CREW’S field staff- Mr. Nir Biswakarma from Ramechhap, Ms. Supriya Lama from Dolakha and Mr. Umesh Poudel from Arghakhanchi. Dr. Meeta S. Pradhan took the session forward with her presentation on “Women champions”. The identification and creation of women champions in all three districts is a crucial part of the project. Pradhan’s presentation provided the team with a basis to further discuss and streamline the identification and selection of women champions.
Ms. Gyanu Maskey and Mr. Sushant Acharya from SIAS proceeded with their session on “Gender-based constraints”. In the first half of the session, they opened the floor for discussion on field-based findings of gender-based constraints (GBCs). Besides the general discussion, the three field staff highlighted the major constraints in their respective districts. Along with the GBCs, findings of the impacts of COVID-19 were also discussed.
Dr. Mani Ram Banjade conducted the next session, which was on “Participatory action research” and “Facilitation of deliberative forums”. Mr. Sushant Acharya (SIAS) and Mr. Bibhor Kayastha (Aria Solutions) took lead in the other session on “Work Plan, Logframe and Milestones”. The session comprised updates on the project’s progress, milestones and discussion on the to-do activities. Ms. Gyanu Maskey gave the workshop’s final session on “Reporting format” where she oriented the project team with the guidelines for preparing field reports.
The two-day workshop hence concluded with the enthusiastic participation of all the team members of CREW project.
