Knowledge

This note highlights the lessons learned in supporting smallholder institutions and organizations. 

This How To Do Note guides design and country teams in conducting an initial analysis of organizations and their capacity development needs at the project design stage. It provides a conceptual framework and practical suggestions and tools to help practitioners systematically collate and summarize information captured during design missions. 

Climate change threatens the natural resource base across much of the developing world. Climate change accelerates ecosystem degradation and makes agriculture more risky. As a result, smallholder
farmers, who are so critical to global food security, are facing more extreme weather. Small-scale farmers are impacted more immediately by droughts, floods and storms, at the same time as they suffer the
gradual effects of climate change, such as water stress in crops and livestock, coastal erosion from rising sea levels and unpredictable pest infestations.

Under the 9th  Replenishment, IFAD committed to moving 80 million rural people out of poverty cumulative from 2010 onwards to 2015, and conducting 30 rigorous impact assessments. Hence the urgent need for appropriate methodologies for impact assessment. To respond to this need, a few piloting initiatives have been launched, one of which is the Improved Learning Initiative (ILI) 2. This  initiative  aims  to  develop  a  potentially  scalable  Participatory  Impact  Assessment  and Learning Approach (PIALA) that can help IFAD and its partners collaboratively assess, explain and debate its contributions to rural poverty impact. The PIALA design and piloting is funded by IFAD’s DFID-financed Innovation Mainstreaming Initiative (IMI) and BMGF’s Measurement, Learning and Evaluation Unit in the Agricultural Development Program; and with important contributions from IFAD’s Country Program Offices and partners in the pilot countries (Vietnam and Ghana), and its Strategy & Knowledge Management and Program Management Departments.

This report proceeds from the Global Forum on Remittances held in Bangkok, Thailand in 2013.

The purpose of this Guide is to support institutional and organizational analysis and strengthening (IOA/S) for design and implementation of programmes and projects.
The Guide is designed to be a practical, hands-on set of directions to those needing to answer the following questions: “how to go about doing institutional and organizational analysis? And once I’ve done it, how do I go about using this analysis to promote sustainable institutions and organizations?”

This is intended as a user-friendly Guide, the use of which could help identify strategic partners and key areas for intervention at COSOP level; to deepen the COSOP analysis at the design stage by generating interventions that support sustainable institutions and organizations, and progress
at implementation stage should be easier to monitor and evaluate effectively.