Author: Susan Thomas

Contributed by Ajinkya Deshmukh, Program Manager

As I sat at my desk in the Delhi office after 21 days, submitting my trip reports and filing my monthly timesheet, I noticed I hadn’t taken a single leave in the month of March, and yet, I was barely in office. I looked at my travel calendar and realised I’d criss-crossed the country for work. From a district in the central Indian Vidharbha region to a small seaside town along the Konkan coast in western India, finally ending with an organisational retreat in the eastern state of Bihar. These were places that dont feature in the everyday imagination of urban India and travelling to them is its own reward.

Kelwa is one such place. Barely three hours north of Mumbai, the sleepy town is at once charming and forgotten. A fortnight ago, I was there with two other colleagues to kick off Digital Greens work with the Maharashtra State Rural Livelihoods Mission (aka Umed). We were to begin working in the districts of Thane, Palghar and Nandurbar. The project would focus on video documenting and disseminating best practices around cotton, soyabean, goatery, and non-farm livelihoods activities in 114 villages in the target districts.

We arrived in the dead of the night, trying to locate our beachside hotel by listening for the sea. As dawn broke, we saw the breathtaking beach only a 100 metres from our hotel.

Over the next week, between long meetings and video production training sessions, we made time to swim in the sea, ride horse-drawn tongas, eat delicately cooked Bombay Duck, and meet some great people (like this brother-sister duo collecting crabs for dinner from under rocks at low tide)!

The programme launch meeting with representatives from all three districts and the video production training were a resounding success. At the end of the week, we were able to map the future course of action for our work in western Maharashtra, and also produce two videos in Marathi on seed selection and the preparation of beejamrut (an organic concoction used to treat seeds before sowing).

What had seemed like just another work trip had offered up so much more! The opportunity to travel had cast new light, literally and figuratively, on the everyday churn of events. I left Kelwa feeling refreshed and rewarded, despite a most hectic work schedule eagerly looking forward to the next time work brought me here.

Contributed by Rishiraj Shukla, Assistant Program Manager, Digital Green

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Digital Green and JEEViKA or government-led Bihar Rural Livelihoods Project have been partners for the last three years, using an ICT-enabled collective learning approach to promote best practices among rural community groups . I recently joined the Digital Green team and have been witness to the scale and depth of the partnership, specifically in two districts,Gopalganj and West Champaran.

At times we often come across people who are willing to learn and adapt to new things without any training or knowhow. These videos on system of rice intensification have made my work easier, I learnt so much from them. Now I am confident that I can deliver the same on the field, says Mr. Abhishek K. Singh who happens to be the JEEViKA livelihood specialist of Narkatiyaganj block of West Champaran. Initially he had no clue about this method of rice farming and hence, was worried about how to implement the practice in the field. Watching the videos helped him in understanding the practice and appreciate its benefits. Abhishek then guided village resource persons on effectively screening the videos in their respective villages, educating the farmers about the practice and how it could increase their yield.

A review meeting at Kuchaikote, one of the blocks in Gopalganj district, could serve as an apt illustration of the relationship between Digital Green and JEEViKA. Things cannot be taken for granted; we will have to work hard, if we want results, said Rajnish Kumar, Livelihood Specialist, JEEViKA, taking the lead during the whole review meeting, motivating the village-level functionaries to go the extra mile in producing quality videos and screening them effectively.Rajnish also shared some great ideas about the videos that can be produced in the region. He was quite excited about the fact that the video production team would be based in the district, which meant that the community would get to see videos in the local language, Bhojpuri, helping them connect better and adopt the agriculture practices shown in those videos.

Contrary to stereotypical notions of tardy government systems, my observation of field-level JEEViKA operations have been largely inspiring. We had requested the district project manager of Gopalganj to procure a video camera for the district so that a video production team could be set up. Within the span of a month, a video camera was purchased and 10,000 copies of merged formats for dissemination and adoption were printed and delivered to the respective blocks. The district project manager at Gopalganj is extremely active and has also helped his counterpart in Nalanda district in procuring a video camera for his district. Our experience with the district project manager at West Champaran has been similar; he has been extremely helpful and responsive to process improvements.

Digital Green, through its ICT-enabled approach, not only strengthens its partners capacity to develop and deliver services in the field of agriculture, but also enables farmers to effectively engage with the government, setting in motion powerful mechanisms for their participation and their engagement. A partnership is based on a common consensus and each partner can work and function smoothly only if they get adequate support from each other. The Digital Green – JEEViKA is an example of a healthy partnership which continues to evolve.

I found the JEEViKA staff at the district level as well as at the block level very approachable. They acknowledge the role of Digital Green in helping them mobilize and build the capacity of village resource persons to deliver information effectively.

To the lay reader, some of these details might seem mundane and simple but these traits and aspects make a huge difference, while working in partnership to roll out community-centric interventions.There is no shortcut if we want our farmers especially small scale farmers to adopt the best practices in agriculture for improved and sustainable livelihoods and for better agricultural output. There is much scope for improvement of such partnership. There is a constant and consistent need for proper monitoring and evaluation and to realize the goals we have set for ourselves, we will have to be accountable to each other, and most importantly to the farmers and the rural communities for whom we work.

Our team in Karnataka surprised us all by screening this short video that captured the team retreats of the past through bits of videos and photos they had collected over the years from various colleagues.

The video helped put things in perspective as we were just starting our 6th Annual Team Retreat with over 70 staff.

The video starts with the first digitalGREEN (DG) video ever made in 2006 capturing our work on the ground to some snapshots of the first annual staff retreat in 2009 – then called “Bootcamp” which was held in Odisha.

Watch this video for a quick peek into our team retreats since the very beginning…

The Digital Green family spread across India and Ethiopia came together for a three-day retreat in Rajgir, Bihar from March 24 – 26th.

It was a fabulous opportunity for everyone to connect with each other, with quite a bit of fun, introspecting, learning and brainstorming thrown in, thanks to some super facilitation by the folks at Organization Development Alternatives, India.

High notes included a cultural evening where each regional team got to showcase their impressive musical, dancing and theatrical talents, a visit to the Mahabodhi temple in Bodh Gaya and the ruins in Nalanda, and a World Caf session that had different teams sharing their big learning/innovation/idea in a creative way.

Here’s a fun picture of all of us at the retreat – do watch this space for more on our annual event!

Contributed by Namita Singh, Senior Program Manager – Training, Digital Green

March 9^th, 2015 was a beautiful day. Twenty people from various Digital Green offices, including India and Ethiopia, had come together in Delhi. There was palpable excitement in the air, some people were meeting each other after a long time, new team members were getting introduced to people from other regions, and some were just catching up with their colleagues. The Training of Trainers (ToT) on Video Production was set to begin.

Rikin Gandhi, our CEO, opened the training, emphasising that the ToT was a step towards ensuring that Digital Green trainers are fully equipped to handle the pace of operations and also constantly innovate to make our video production processes more meaningful and engaging.

The 5-day training was packed. The facilitators, Ajinkya Deshmukh, B Praveen and I, all trainers from Digital Green, had brainstormed to design this training to be as creative, fun and participatory as possible.

Day One started with basics of camera operations such as types of shots, camera angles and composition. While these were basics, we introduced some really cool exercises, such as use the 5 basic shots to establish who that person is. Day Two continued with more fun exercises on the technical aspects of light and sound. One of the groups shot bad and good lighting in the same space and set-up. They demonstrated how a little bit of difference can make a shot either well-lit or badly-lit. Their exercise was so good, that we will definitely use it as an example and instructional video from our next training onwards!

Second half of this day focused on storytelling, where we asked people to go wild with their creativity. We mostly make videos on agriculture, health and nutrition practices, which sometimes gets monotonous and people find it hard to break the pattern and come up with different ideas for their videos. We wanted the participants to start thinking afresh to get out of their monotony. They went so wild with it that we ended with stories about pink baby dragons, politicians and toothache! There was much more on storytelling and narrative techniques the next day. The groups worked on their skills to develop interesting first person and third person narratives with proper beginning, middle and end sequences. Some used voice-overs to talk about road safety and others about benefits of yoga. All the videos generated much laughter (and I believe brought down the stress levels of the participants substantially!), but were also reviewed critically by the facilitators and other participants on technical and conceptual aspects.

On the last two days of the training, the participants were divided into groups of four, each group to develop a 8-10 minute story on a topic of their choice. The first day was for shooting and the second day was for editing. The day for the shoot began early in the morning at 6:30 AM. Groups came up with stories on female foeticide, gender inequity, foreign tourists in India and alcoholism. All the groups worked hard to make their video the best. While there was a lot of excitement to shoot their videos creatively, the participants were also particular about the technical quality, checking and re-checking their shots to ensure that sound has been recorded properly and the visuals look fine.

Next up was a comprehensive review of all the videos. We ensured selection of the best video was a democratic process, with everyone giving marks. The video on female foeticide won the Best Video award – it was shot beautifully, had a good concept and our lead actors acted like professionals. The teams behind the videos on alcoholism and foreign tourists in India were also acknowledged for their effort. Vinay Kumar, our COO, handed out the certificates encouraging everyone to put the learnings into practice.

It was then time to ‘Pack Up’. After these intense 5 days, participants left with some good learnings, lot of motivation and great memories. We do hope to produce more interesting and creative videos following this ToT, so keep watching our videos!

Meet Letebrihen Gidey, 42, mother of three, resident of Medebay Zana village, Hekifen district, Ethiopia.

Letebrihen is a single parent, bringing up three kids on her own, two daughters aged 13 and 15, and a son who is 18. All three kids study in Medebay Zana Middle School and help their mother on their farm after school. Letebrihen’s big dream is to be able to see her children escape the cycle of poverty one day. She believes education is the way out for her kids and insists on them attending school regularly.

As part of a women development group, Letebrihen has attended Digital Green-enabled video screenings on local best practices and adopts relevant practices featured in these videos. One of the practices she has adopted is inter cropping of teff and tomato and line planting of maize. She watched the video and realized that although the new technique did require more effort than the traditional farming methods she is used to, the benefits are immense.

She recalls having mixed feelings after watching the video, excited about trying it and getting the same benefit as the farmer in the video and anxious to see the results. Letebrihen was convinced enough to practice the new farming technique with the help of her children just a week after watching the video. I was able to maximize my land use. This is the first time I produced tomato without using irrigation, as I took advantage of the rainy season. My income during this cropping season has gone up as well because of these two crops I planted simultaneously. I have basically doubled the land I once had, she says triumphantly.

She is a woman’s group leader and tries to empower and teach women what she knows about farming. However, the idea that she can reach more women to inspire and encourage has been an exciting one for her. Her progressive traits led the district level video production team to feature Letebrihen in one of the videos on integrated crops and livestock farming system.She says, I remember watching one of the first videos and being amazed at how I am able to learn from this farmer who lives far from where I live. So I am very happy that other people in another village will be listening to me and watching me. It is such a great opportunity to have.

Know more about Letebrihen and other inspiring individuals in Ethiopia whose lives we have touched

Since 2012, Digital Green has reached more than 30,000 smallholder farmers in Ethiopia with improved agricultural and livelihood practices using community-sourced videos.

Here’s a short film on the impact of the Digital Green approach on the Ethiopian agricultural extension system and the way ahead:

Dharmender Kumar is thrilled that the best practice videos he helps disseminate among women farmers in his community lead to increased yield and farm productivity. Here’s his story:

Aman Bhardwaj is part of the extended family of Digital Green. He is a student of visual communication at National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad and is interested in linguistics, ethnography, and technology and is curious to learn more about how design interventions are carried out at the grassroots level in the Indian development sector.

Aman is interning with us on a project on training rural community intermediaries to use pico projectors (small handheld projectors) to effectively disseminate video screenings on best practices within community groups.

Aman convinced his faculty at NID to support him on using this hands-on experience to learn how print-based outcomes may be an effective tool to consolidate the training of the Village Resource Persons (rural community intermediaries working with Digital Green) as the paper is a familiar learning medium that is always available and flexible to the users’ requirement.

What followed is an amazing journey of learning, which enriched his understanding of how urban and rural India can connect and learn through traditional and new technologies.

Here’s an early post from his blog:

Meeting with Rikin Gandhi

Having sent in the official proposal to the VTI team, my supervisors from Digital Green, I got the opportunity to meet the CEO, Rikin. After discussing my work and studies, we discussed the vision and some details about my role here. Fortunately, our visions matched and we agreed on the broad direction I would work on. Here are some points that got established:

We agreed that the paper-based deliverable I’m working on would consist of as few pages as possible as opposed to a weighty manual.

We also agreed that it would more effective for me to work with the VTI team so that my deliverable would consolidate the work that has been and is being done on an instructional video, trainings, and assessment games.

{By the way, I’ll mention at this point that the team permanently located at Bihar and working on the field has already come up with a manual and some games to test the grasp of the pico users (VRPs/CKWs). These would be good to study and build upon applying my graphic design skills.}

Rikin mentioned that though I am planning to focus on a few particular projectors, the list being used by Digital Green is already 5 strong and only going to grow, so it would be ideal if whatever I come up with can be flexible for that. This reminded me of something Tarun, my faculty guide, had already mentioned that one level would be explaining projectors in general, how to use them and the next would involve explaining the particular projector being worked on.

He also stressed, like most DG employees I’ve interacted with so far, that its important to go to the field once there is something to validate. Given the time frame and the empirical nature of the project, this makes sense to me. So I’d like to come up with something by next Monday.

It was great to meet Rikin and be welcomed on board with an open mind and a smiling face. Looking forward to the work I’m going to do starting now!

You can read more about Aman’s experience of working with us on his blog – thepicoproject.wordpress.com that he maintained as a reporting tool for his college project.