ABSTRACT
The Grameen Foundation, through its Community Knowledge Worker (CKW) program, has pioneered a model that combines mobile-enabled advisory services with networks of trusted community members to complement traditional agricultural extension systems.
Grameen Foundation’s CKW concept, in which a network of village-level farmer intermediaries are equipped with mobile phones, enables the flow of information between farming communities and research organizations, government extension agencies, buyers, NGOs, and other groups working with farmers. The model described in this case study creates a dynamic, two-way feedback loop between farmers and the organizations serving them and enables sector-wide learning.
The use of mobile devices within last-mile agent networks promotes participatory, iterative, real-time dialogue between development stakeholders and farmers, a fundamental component in enabling a collective learning process. Establishing feedback loops alone is rarely sufficient to spur action or ensure accountability for the information exchanged. It is also critical to build analytic capacity to derive meaning from feedback and to develop the institutional systems and incentives to ensure that learning leads to action.
Undoubtedly, collective learning requires bidirectional feedback channels. Building these channels to facilitate dialogue with farmers was just the beginning. Only through multiple cycles of learning and, admittedly, some failure along the way, did the Grameen Foundation gain insight on how to develop the organizational capacity needed to consistently derive meaning from the feedback channels created and ensure that the unique insights that the CKW model enabled translated into improved services for farmers.
