|
The organisation is
founded on two operational levels: across all themes to ensure the system's
overall consistency and within each of the specific themes.
InterDev's overall Steering Committee is made up of one coordinator
per thematic cluster and experts in information system administration,
Web site management, and information treatment and dissemination. This
Committee's purpose is to:
- develop tools and
make them available,
- provide users with
training on the database and continuous support for using the tools,
- define the network's
operational rules and ensure the consistency of its information treatment
and validation rules and methods,
- monitor the activities
of each of the thematic groups.
GRET currently chairs the steering committee.
Each
specific theme is made up of a group of specialist organisations.
Each theme has its own steering and coordination committee. Each of these
committees is made up of a small group of partners (3-4 organisations
from developed and developing countries). They mandate one organisation
to take charge of theme coordination. The theme coordinators' role is
to:
- implement and coordinate
the network,
- define the theme's
information strategy,
- administrate the
thematic database and validate information,
- provide content for
the Web site and optimise information among the thematic working group.
The goal is to share responsibility for coordinating information collection
as widely as possible. Depending on size, each theme may be sub-divided
into various major sub-themes for experience capitalisation. Each of these
sub-ensembles is coordinated by one organisation that is exceptionally
skilled in their field. Responsibility for validating information can
thus be shared within each thematic working group.
For example, the "food processing" group defined 4 sub-themes:
fruits, cereals, dairy products, and product commercialisation. Each of
these sub-themes is coordinated by an organisation: ENDA-GRAF (Senegal)
for information on cereals, Agro-PME (Cameroon) for fruits, CITE (Madagascar)
for dairy products, and GRET for commercialisation.
- InterDev Food
Processing - GRET (France)
- InterDev Agroecological
Farming Systems - AGROMISA (Netherlands)
- InterDev Urban
and Periurban Agriculture - ETC International (Netherlands)
- InterDev Decentralised
Electricity Supplies - GRET (France)
It rapidly became clear that the regional dimension was important
and met the needs of partners from developing countries. It is on the
regional scale (the Sahel, the Indian Ocean, South-East Asia) that collecting
and exchanging information can be efficiently organised because problems
are similar, customs shared, and contact facilitated. It is on this scale
that innovations can be compared and lessons can be learned.
InterDev will become most pertinent by dovetailing this regional approach
with a global dimension based on an international foothold for each theme.
An InterDev network structure strategy based on regional nodes was therefore
defined. This strategy uses the implementation of regional programmes
by developing partnerships with relay organisations that develop their
ability to create arenas for knowledge production and bring them to life:
identifying needs; identifying, gathering and describing experiences and
innovations; mastering information management tools; and widely disseminating
information that meets populations' needs.
A plan to develop these programmes by sub-region has been established
and the corresponding means are currently being sought.
|
