Climate Smart Agriculture for Rural Smallholder Farmers in Malawi: Through our CSA project, on Thursday, March 6th and Friday, March 7th, 2014 we convened our first annual district level Civil Society Organization (CSO) workshop with relevant stakeholders from the following fields: food and nutrition security, sustainable agriculture, environmental resilience, and climate change. The theme of the workshop: Achieving Large-Scale Social and Environmental Impact in Dowa District offered participants an alternative to the prevailing model of isolated and fragmented impact, in which nonprofit, business, and government organizations each work to address complex social problems independently.
This civil society workshop is one of many that Kusamala intends to conduct over the next 2 years with relevant stakeholders in Dowa District. The purpose and objective of the workshop was to create a coordinated and effective response within civil society to climate change patterns, food shortages, malnutrition, deforestation and decreased water quantity and quality all of which have serious implications for Malawi’s future. This workshop was an important step towards understanding that social problems and serious solutions arise from the interaction of many organizations within a large system.
Proposed Purpose and Objectives:
Identify blocks and find common grounds between representatives of civil society organizations working within the sector of food and nutrition security, sustainable agriculture, environmental resilience and climate change.
Share tools and best practices with the goal of creating a shared measurement system on what is working and what is not.
Establish a living network of stakeholders in the relevant sectors with a clear commitment to improve communication, advocacy and large-scale impact.
We would like to express our heartfelt appreciations Masankho Banda for his excellent facilitation, and to everybody who patronized the workshop.
