News

E-learning Course on Collaboration and Advocacy Techniques from the EC-FAO Food Security Programme

March 11, 2008, Rome

The EC-FAO Food Security Information for Action Programme has released a new e-learning course entitled “Collaboration and Advocacy Techniques”. The course was produced in collaboration with Overseas Development Institute's (ODI) Research and Policy in Development (RAPID) Programme and Women Thrive Worldwide. The course consists of 3 lessons, of approximately 45 to 90 minutes each, for a total of about 3 hours of self-paced instruction.

ODI RAPID provided materials for the lesson “Techniques for improving collaborative work” which presents a wide range of collaboration tools and techniques for strengthening group work, shared thinking and learning. The lesson also includes a set of printable practical guides about each of the techniques presented.

Women Thrive Worldwide provided materials for a lesson on “Advocacy” that describes the advocacy process and various strategies for influencing different audience groups.

A third lesson, “Deciding on a collaborative assessment”, illustrates the advantages and disadvantages of conducting collaborative assessments, and describes the process for developing a collaborative work plan.

As with previous e-learning courses offered by the EC-FAO Food Security Information for Action Programme, the interactive self-paced learning lessons are accompanied by job-aids, methodological guidelines and case studies which demonstrate real life applications of the concepts and procedures being taught. A set of PowerPoint slides, handouts and exercises, which can be easily customized by trainers to help develop their own face to face training are also available.

The course is available on CD and the Internet. To access this and other courses free of charge visit the Distance Learning Section of the EC-FAO Food Security Information for Action Programme website at: www.foodsec.org/dl

For more information:
e-mail: information-for-action@fao.org