Overview

Many agricultural extension service providers around the world have a good track record of providing farming households with information, opportunities for experimentation and support to improve the productivity and profitability of their farming operations while promoting natural resource protection. While all are committed to the strategy of supporting rural communities, an extension organization may lose track of their mission in the daily operations and struggle to demonstrate to themselves or others how effectively they are achieving their missions.
 
This manual provides a framework - the Institutional Review and Planning Framework (IRPF) to help leaders of agencies that provide extension services to examine their organizational mission (and the results implied by it), to analyze if and how the strategy of extension services helps them to accomplish their mission, and to confront key operational challenges faced in providing quality services. It is written as a workshop guide with practical steps to engage in this analysis. Of particular importance is how organizations can more fully integrate nutrition- and gender-responsive programming in their routine outreach efforts.
 
The workshop is designed for board members and senior staff of these organizations and every effort should be made to assure that leaders come because the only real hope that decisions made during the workshop will truly affect the entire organization afterward lies in leadership's participation.

Objectives

By the end of the workshop, and in order to accomplish it purpose, participants will have…

• Analyzed the importance of organizational missions in setting strategy and operational priorities.
• Defined the vision they have for rural community members with whom their organizations work.
• Evaluated the importance of nutrition- and gender-responsive programming to achieve their vision and mission and articulated ways they are already engaging in such programming.
• Translated their organization’s mission into goals and SMART objectives (using three key result areas: target members, needs, impacts), with consideration about how to include nutrition- and gender-sensitive programming in their organization’s services.
• Planned immediate actions to improve 1) training efforts in communities; 2) support to staff working with communities and 3) partnering efforts to enhance services to communities.
• Developed an action plan to implement key actions to increase nutrition- and gender-responsive extension interventions.