Meeting with YPARD Asia reps shapes the annual plan

The YPARD coordinator, regional coordinator, and representatives for some Asian regions met in India in March, 2012 to formalise some of the activities for the region.  Some of the ideas that came out were as follows:

Activities

Learning Needs Assessment

• Working with different stakeholder groups to identify their capacity development needs.  These should be country specific (and more so, if possible).  This could focus on a specific stakeholder group (farmers, extension workers, NGOs, etc.).  Probably best if something other than young researchers.
• This information would then be used in advocacy for other organizations to tailor their capacity development trainings to those topics that emerge from the study.  It should be clear, however, on what the outcomes of this would be.

Member Mobilisation

• Strategies for this include attending relevant events in the region to tell young people about YPARD and spread the word among other organizations. 
• All persons should borrow or rent a laptop for this activity so that members can sign up to YPARD on the spot.  Often people forget to do so afterwards.

Communications

• Asia efforts should go into ensuring that regional members contribute updates on activities in the region for the newsletter, so that the region is strongly represented
• One major task will be to feed the YPARD website with local information, taking extra care to solicit this information from the local YPARD members. 

ARD events

• YPARD Asia will seek to be visible at existing ARD events, which may include having a booth, or organizing a side session at a conference.
• YPARD Asia will facilitate the attendance by YPs at key ARD events.  It must be clear that the event meets the objectives of YPARD.  YPARD should always try to seek to leverage its funding with the organizer to maximize funds and youth attendance (for example, offer to pay airfares of 3 youth if the organizer covers hotel and DSA).  Furthermore, calls for this should be made to all YPARD Asia members and those finalists selected according to identified criteria.
• E-discussion leading up to one of these ARD events could help to mobilize members and provide those who are sponsored with something to say and the ability to represent a wider group of people.