Project Team Training

The Rupantar project aims to build capacity to define and implement diversification pathways, to ensure project activities can be implemented, and to contribute to an enabling environment for food system transformation. The aim is for there to ultimately be more people and organisations with capacity to support diversification, and improved capacity to define and implement sustainable pathways for transformation of the food system.

Capacity development has to happen at multiple levels, including for individuals, organisations and systems (the enabling environment). The project will take a staggered approach to training, focusing first on the project team; and then subsequently on project partners (organisations and the enabling environment) for scaling and community implementation.

In the early stages of the project, we are focusing on capacity within the project team, to ensure initial activities that build an understanding of the context for diversity are incorporating the broad measures of sustainability that the project has defined, including livelihoods; inclusion; nutrition and food security; climate resilience; and groundwater availability and access.

These trainings will be used to build a common understanding for the project team; for the development of frameworks to assess scaling interventions and policy settings, and to help inform the design of an initial baseline survey. We are lucky to have engaged with several regional experts for initial introductory training sessions, including:

• Nutrition Sensitive Agriculture – Dr. Jessica Raneri (16th December 2021)

• Groundwater access – Dr. Marie-Charlotte Buisson (31st January 2022)

• Groundwater availability – Dr. Mohammad Mainuddin (16th February 2022)

• Climate resilience – Dr. Anjal Prakash (17th February 2022)

Additional training sessions will be planned after a Capacity Needs Assessment and will help to inform the selection of diversification options (technology level), community engagement approaches, and ongoing monitoring of diversification pathways.