By Bob Aston
The Laikipia Rural Voices (LRV)
was started by Arid Lands Information Network
(ALIN) in 2011. This was an initiative aimed at promoting citizen journalism
by training young people in basic Journalism skills such as photojournalism,
news writing, creative writing, feature writing, Interviewing, blogging and
media laws and ethics.
ALIN’s
initiative of training local communities on citizen journalism and blogging has
also led the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) Global Environment
Facility (GEF) Small Grants Programme (SGP) grantees from Laikipia County to
adopt the initiative as a way of sharing their project experiences.
This is expected to not only enhance
their online visibility but also help in closing knowledge gaps, improving
accessibility of indigenous knowledge as well as ensuring that communities are
better informed about Sustainable Land Management (SLM).
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| 3 members of Upper Ewaso Narok WRUA being trained on blogging |
Improving communities’ access to
knowledge and skills is one of the activities that ALIN has carried out for years with a strong
focus on small-scale sustainable agriculture, climate change adaptation,
natural resources management (NRM) and other livelihood issues.
ALIN
has been involved in knowledge sharing for more than 22 years now using various
platforms that include use of videos documentation, exchange visits, open
learning days and articles aimed at farmers and pastoralists. The organization
has also been using two publications namely Baobab which features small scale sustainable
agriculture and Joto Africa, a climate change briefing highlighting case
studies on adaptation.
Many youths have been encouraged to
join farming through the various LRV blog posts. They have
been able to learn from what their peers are doing as well as gathering
information about different crops and farming practices.
James
Mwangi, 20, had his story featured in LRV and since then many youths were
encouraged with his passion for farming and some even decided to start farming.
“Many youths read the article and
some who had never thought about farming were encouraged to venture into
farming. I was told that I am an inspiration to them,” said James.
On his part, James
Mwai, 26, resigned from his teaching job to start farming after reading a
lot of information about farming through LRV.
“I had gathered a lot of information
about farming from ALIN and through the various blog posts that I read from
LRV. This contributed to the reason why I decided to start farming,” said Mwai.
LRV has been at the
forefront of promoting SOKO+
which is a digital commodity trading and information system linking small scale
farmers to end retailers and Farm Records
Management Information System (FARMIS-Kenya) which is a farm management and
diagnostic tool based on the use of farm records.
The two products are dear to LRV as they help to empower
farmers. Seeing farmers improve their livelihood is an issue that ALIN has always been keen on.
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| Blogging capacity building training by ALIN |
LRV has now gone a step
further and is now documenting ALIN’s project which seeks to strengthen
community resilience to impacts of climate change and stewardship of natural
resources in Baringo, Kajiado and Laikipia counties. The project which is being
supported by Act! Change! Transform! (ACT) seeks to promote Climate Smart
Agriculture (CSA).
Blogging on agriculture and
particularly on successes and issues faced by youths engaged in agriculture,
highlighting the role and importance of family farming as well as issues
pertaining to climate change, environment conservation and NRM enabled ALIN through LRV to emerge the best in East
Africa region in the Institution category of Youth
in Agriculture Blog Competition (YoBloco Awards).
The award enabled ALIN to be
represented at the Fin4Ag
Conference: revolutionising finance for agri-value chains that had brought
together decision makers from both public and private sectors with an aim of
building a modern and high performing agricultural financing system. The
conference provided an opportunity for ALIN
representatives to learn more about the increasing importance of agricultural
value chain finance, create new partnership and improve current project on
working with farmers.
The knowledge gathered during the
conference has now enabled LRV
to document and disseminate information about agricultural value chain finance.
Prior and during the conference ALIN
representative who also volunteered as a social reporter managed to write a
total of 8 articles that were shared in CTA blogs.
To date, ALIN has trained 188 community members on
basic journalism skills and blogging and also helped community members to start
their own blogs. LRV has so far registered more than 68,000 visitors while
number of articles posted now stands at 401.
Other partners have also started
using articles from the blog in disseminating information about farming. The
work of LRV has also
been replicated by ALIN across its Maarifa centres.
LRV has also been
increasing awareness and understanding of the challenges faced by smallholders
as well as raising their profile by focusing attention on its role in
alleviating hunger, poverty, providing food security and improving livelihoods,
while protecting the environment and biodiversity.
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