The CDAIS project, implemented in America Central by the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation (AICS) as the Agrinatura representative  and the FAO, organised a workshop around Facilitation of Innovation Processes, 5-9 February 2018, Guatemala City. Participants to the workshop were a group of 25 facilitators who accompany the different innovation partnerships: beans, potatoes, cocoa and coffee in Honduras and honey, avocado, beans and cocoa in Guatemala.

The event opened with Diego Recalde – FAO  representative in Guatemala, Myra Wopereis – global coordinator for CDAIS, Eleonora Banfi – AICS, and Berlamino Gomez – from the Agriculture Ministry in Guatemala (MAGA).

In the 2 countries, the CDAIS project was launched in November 2015 through the Inception Workshop and will come to an end on December 2018. As of today, main stakeholders of strategic partnerships have been identified and capacity needs assessment have been conducted with them. As a result of the Capacity Needs Assessments, coaching plans have been determined and will drive CDAIS activities regarding capacity building.

Facilitators participated in the workshop with the objective of building their capacities in facilitation of innovation systems and of building their ownership of the coaching plans that will be executed in the last phase of the project.

Hector Garcia from the Papa Sana project of the Direction of Sciences and Agricultural Technology (DICTA) from Honduras and facilitator for the potatoe partnership expresses that this is valuable experience to support the potatoe partnership as himself comes from a potatoes producer family. Potatoes are a very important vegetable for Honduran people.

“I like the CDAIS approach because it creates functional capacities to facilitate meetings where we assess needs and it develops capacities to collaborate and reflect for decision making for producers and stakeholders of the partnership”, adds the facilitator.

Mandi Garcia, a young woman studying agriculture science and coming from a family of avocado producers and facilitator for the avocado partnership in Guatemala, states that being part of the CDAIS project is an opportunity to work with producers and strengthen mutual capacities at local level, and in other part to gain professional experience for the benefit of her community.

Myra Wopereis, CDAIS global coordinator, expressed her satisfaction with the progresses and successes made by the 2 centro-american countries and encouraged them to be references for other countries.