Annual Review & Planning Meeting, Rangpur

Our Annual Review and Planning Meeting was held from the 20th – 24th November in Rangpur, Bangladesh. This was an excellent opportunity to bring together the whole project team, including several new staff members, to review progress on current activities and plan for the next stage of the project. We were also pleased to have our new Research Program Manager from ACIAR attend, Dr Neil Lazarow.

There were high levels of energy and enthusiasm in the room, which helped with co-contributions to ideas, activities, processes and understanding of project concepts. The meeting gave an opportunity for the team to explore the way we think about Gender and Inclusion as a key basis for project activities. Through exploration of case studies of existing diversification and time to visit and discuss these, we have a deepened understanding of diversification and change processes in the region.

With time to work on two tools that have been recently developed that focus on 1) developing effective scaling strategies, and 2) prioritising climate challenges and adaptation options, the team provided valuable feedback for improvement, and can see the value in applying these in the project and their wider networks.

A key achievement from the meeting was to discuss the concepts of principles of community engagement, as well as the processes that the project will use to implement pathways. This synthesises outputs and experiences from Roadmaps (WAC/2018/220) and SIAGI (LWR/2014/072), as well as partners’ own considerable experiences in implementation.

Time devoted to developing the workplan for 2023 was well spent, and Rupantar is now in a strong position going into the next phase of the project.