1 Digital Green

Transcript

Brief Synopsis

Hello Friends. By now we have completed 4 weeks of the course on e-Extension. So you have already completed 2 quizzes. I am sure you are enjoying this course. And I once again request you all to be part of the Forum activities. If you have any difficulty in understanding any of the concepts, that we have discussed so far. Kindly bring it to our notice through Forum activities by posting your views, and at the same time if you have any new experiences or the new experiments that what we did not cover, or some interesting success stories or the case studies, if you have, you can also share it so that, that can be brought to the notice of the entire community, which is undergoing this course. It is for the benefit of the group.

And as you have seen in the last week we were talking of the means to achieve e-Extension, wherein BYOD was one of the means (Bring Your Own Device), so then we talked about Blog, Content Analysis, then Social Media as a means for delivering extension services, and Tarahaat.com. So these were some of the means through which we can achieve the e-Extension, that what we discussed previously. In this week we will be focusing on some of the practical applications of e-Extension approaches.

Introduction

So one such experiment is the ‘Digital Green’ that we will be elaborating now. Coming to the Digital Green,

• Which is an innovative digital platform for community engagement. So how the community can be engaged in the process of dissemination of the messages, in the process of dissemination of innovations. This is one issue. The other issue is. Is it that the community also has innovations to share. And the people of the community or the members of the community can also act as resource persons, so that’s another question that Digital Green is going to give us the answer. So generally we perceive that the people who are working under the research system are responsible for generation of knowledge and dissemination of knowledge. But under many circumstances the experienced farmers can also act as resource persons.
  The advantage with these experienced farmers as well as the progressive farmers is, so the command over the practices; the agricultural practices. And at the same time they can deliver these messages in their regional languages. Not only in regional languages, in their regional dialects. So how to make them resource person is the basic issue of this Digital Green. So that is why we said that providing innovative digital platform for community engagement.
• So this project was conceived as a Microsoft Research India’s technology for emerging markets, basically in 2006 by Mr Rikin Gandhi. Looking into the potentials and the services that we can provide to the society with this methodology,
• Rikin Gandhi in the year 2008 thought “let us make it an independent non-governmental organization”. That is the Digital Green
• So just to make it popular among the people, involvement of the community. He developed 2 games, that is Wonder Village and Farmer Book for giving them the information and for attracting them, so that they can be a part of this particular activity.

So the Vision of Digital Green includes, to create a world where all individuals live a life of dignity. It is not that somebody else is coming over to you and he is trying to provide you dignity. But it is with your own involvement you can lead a dignified life. So that is what is the process that is being facilitated by the Digital Green.

The Mission is to integrate innovative technology because all the time they are talking of technology. So that is a means to achieve, What is that? The global development effort to improve the human wellbeing. So technology is a means, but the end goal is to achieve the well-being of the human-beings.

The Value Systems that the Digital Green has adopted includes the humility, excellence, accountability, empathy and integrity. And how these things are being practiced. So that we will be looking into their experiences.

Approach

The approach adopted by Digital Green includes,

1. The participatory process for video production on improved livelihood practices. There are number of practices that the farmer is taking up. And when we look into the agricultural operations, since generations they are following these things but the only thing that is essential is how can we make minor modifications in these practices. And how can we communicate these practices to the fellow farmers or the community at large. So that is what is, where the participation of the end-users are very very essential and Digital Green is ensuring that.
2. Then coming to the second issue, that is the human mediated learning model for video dissemination and training. Because the experiments on video production are not new. In the late 1970’s and early 1980’s the organization known as SEWA(Self Employed Women’s Association), they also documented number of videos, and they disseminated this information among the different parts of the country, through their volunteers and through their organizations. So the process of video production during those period was totally different. And the process of video production under Digital Green is with modern technology with electronic mediation and we can disseminate these messages in a very easy manner.
3. Then hardware and software technology platform for data management. So in those days the videos produced were stored in the form of video disk or the hard disk. But here digitally you can manage all these things and you can bring in lot of modifications into these technologies at regular intervals.
4. An iterative model to progressively address the needs and interests of the community, with analytical tools. Because the preferences, the choices, the needs of the people are changing at regular intervals, and accordingly so the Digital Green can take care of those things and satisfy the needs of the society

The basic data management software has the feature of Connect-online as well as Connect- offline

So this is what is the unique feature that is adopted under Digital Green. So the details that will be looking into the further discussions.

Comparison

If we compare the efforts of Digital Green with those of traditional extension service providing mechanisms. So the cost in case of Digital Green is 10 times lesser than the traditional mechanism of delivery of extension services. And if we compare the adoption of innovations with the help of this Digital Green efforts, is 7 times more than the traditional extension efforts. So this is what is the drastic change that the electronic mediation has brought into the paradigm of technology transfer. So that is where we feel the potential of the technologies, specially in case of information dissemination and information dissemination itself is known as the development dissemination.

Investors

So who are all the investors of this Digital Green efforts.

1. It begins with government organizations like the Ministry of Rural Development, which is directly a part of this
2. Then Bill-Melinda Gates foundation, which is an international body
3. Similarly USAID.
4. DFID
5. Then international research organization (ICRISAT)
6. Then the technology giants like Cisco, Google, Oracle

So all these public, private as well as government institutions are part of this particular system.

Partners

If you look into the partners of this Digital Green effort, so there is a wide range of institutions that we come across. So it involves as a partner, so there are government institutions, government supported institutions, non-governmental organizations, research and development organizations. Number of institutions are coming together. What is the need for involvement of these number of people in the Digital Green effort? The first and foremost reason is.

So the videos produced under the Digital Green concepts are by the grass roots people. So if you want to reach these grass roots people, we need the support of non-governmental organizations. We need the support of technical research institutions and to some extent government institutions support is also needed. So that is how the concept of Digital Green is taking the help of all these institutions for making, their ideas a reality.

Role of Digital Green

So if we look into the role of Digital Green. So basically the role is to

• Promote the agricultural growth by providing development messages. By providing innovative messages.
• Then promoting nutritional securities among the rural people. So they have the resources. But how to make use of those resources. And how to get the benefit of those resources. So that’s what is the essential issue. So the Digital Green by production of videos is disseminating such information.
• Then integrating technology for quality training. So the training earlier were only in the traditional mode. But with these production of videos, the level of training is being improved as well as people are developing the skills.
• Then increasing income through the improved market access. So a marketing App has been developed under this concept and how the farmers are getting the benefits of this. So that we will be looking into, in the subsequent slides.
• Then bringing together urban as well as rural communities in India with the help of the technology. So buyers and sellers are on the same platform. The sellers are none other than the primary producers. They can get the benefits of all the marketing intermediaries and the marketing channels, because they are into the direct selling efforts.
• Then using multi-media channels to reach more and more farmers. So the base of this or the effort is being widened with the help of the technology.

Then coming to the concept of CoCo as I have already discussed. It is data workhorse, which connects online as well as offline. So whether the receiver is having the network connectivity or not, the internet connectivity or not, but the contents of this effort are readily available for the farmers. And that is what is the mechanism that CoCo provides.

It is an analytic dashboard which allows the user to collect and visualize the crucial insights at anytime, anywhere on any device. So this process facilitates the receiver, motivates the receiver to go for accessing the contents on Digital Green platform. So if you look into the achievements so far, the Digital Green has

• Has produced more than 5000 videos in 50 languages. So these figures are itself an indicator, to what extent that this organization is working. Because development of videos in the regional languages, in regional dialects is an uphill task. And making use of the grassroots people as a resource person; that is another thing wherein huge amount of capacity building efforts are needed. So this is how the team of Digital Green is working.
• Basically the videos are screened offline as well as online by ensuring the wisdom captured continues to improve the livelihoods of the farmers and their communities. So with this purpose the videos are being screened among the communities.

Capacity Building. Then coming to the capacity building of the frontline workers. They are being trained, so that they can be a part of this over a period of time, and they can enhance their skills with the efforts of Digital Green. If you look into the reach of the Digital Green, not only nationally, but in some other countries also. In Ethiopia alone so they have reached around more than 2.5 lakh farmers. And the practices that they covered so far includes 85,721. In Indian context more than 4.5 lakh farmers are part of this particular system, wherein they are focusing on 1,85,988 practices, wherein they are involved with.

• So Loop app is the facility wherein the farmers can directly enter into the process of marketing. He can become a trader, that too directly through the users of those products. This particular app facilitates the farmer to sell their produce as quickly as possible for the best possible price, because the buyer is a direct consumer and the seller is the primary producer. So they can negotiate the price and they can fix the price. And both are in a win-win situation, because both are the beneficiaries, there are no intermediary channels in between. And it is not taking the additional time of the farmer. Being part of this production system, the farmer can make use of this app. That is the Loop app.

And using this app so far the farmers have sold, 4,700 tons of vegetables; which is if you look into that particular thing in financial terms. It is coming to 750 thousand U.S dollars. So this is what is the amount the primary producers are realizing. So this is what is the important contribution of Digital Green efforts, that we can say.

Conclusion

To conclude, I would like to quote again Rikin Gandhi who said that “. A journey of a 1000 miles begins with a single step”. And Digital Green has already taken that step. And it is amassing the people, it is taking the people into that particular journey. So those millions of people are targeting to cover millions of miles. So that we can achieve the end goal of enhancing our living standards and better living. With this we are coming to the end of this discussion on the Digital Green. And in the next interaction we will be talking on the concept of MOOCs. You are already part of this MOOCs, but how the MOOCs can be utilized for the purpose of education as well as for the purpose of extension services. So the details that we will be discussing in the next interaction.

Thank You.