Nkungu, such challenges are almost found every where. My joy above it all is that, you were able to break through the farmers with wisdom to get information thanks to how the elders addressed your case.
In some area, the elders will still buy the side of his people, which is a great challengen for broadcasters to collaborate with these stakeholder at the rural level.
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I was waiting to hear more responses from others. It really sent me into thinking and consequently took me to also ask.
What is partnership and how does it differ from collaboration? I have done a bit of research and can say as broadcaster, we need to differentiate Collaboration, Partnership and Sponsorship.
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Collaboration involves cooperation in which parties are not necessarily bound contractually.
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Partnership is a contractual relationship involving close cooperation between two or more parties having specified and joint rights and responsibilities.
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Sponsorship is a cash and/or in-kind fee paid to a property in return for access to the exploitable commercial potential associated with that property
Check more on the links:
https://winybernard.com/partnership-vs-collaboration-which-one-is-for-you/
https://www.ntc.blm.gov/krc/uploads/412/13_MbN_partnership-vs-collaboration.pdf
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You and you team has some work to help me. I am about to conclude that in collaboration, parties are not bound to each other and that no payment is involved. Now I see a farmer story with a title suggesting farmer and agric technician collaboration but in the story, technicians are paid.
Hi @MartinMwape
I am hoping our resource people @Yakubu, @bfiafor will give you more information on this. My own understanding is that parties may agree on the terms of collaboration. I am going to make an example: one radio station partnered or collaborated with a cellphone company. The radio station offered this company airtime to advertise their business in exchange for management getting cellphone contracts without paying for the charges. Because this was a community radio station, and was not able to compensate the management for work put in, this was kind of a reward for them. Station management received new cellphones every 2 years while the radio station advertised the cellphone company. Would you not call that collaboration?
Collaboration doesn’t necessarily mean there will no payment involved. It depends on the nature of the partnership. It may be stakeholders getting exposure through radio and farmers benefiting relevant information that will assist them in their farming, no exchange of funds but still the radio station can make money from this collaboration as they will have improved farmer programs that they can sell to potential sponsors or advertisers.
In the Burkina Faso story you shared, I can only speculate that the amount paid to the technician is probably helping in buying the pesticides and not necessarily paying for the service rendered. Even if they were using the pesticides themselves, they were still going to buy.
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Thank you MartinMwape for the clarification. Sorry but i am wondering if both collaboration and sponsorship parties are not bound. That binding is only in sponsorship and collaboration no binding kind of arrangement? May be both collaboration and sponsorship need binding since they both need a service from each other.
@MartinMwape: Collaboration will work best if parties involved have a guiding document spelling out what is expected of each party during the collaboration. Hence contractual bound (not legal one) would make the collaboration more effective as no party ambush the other during execution.
As rightly pointed out collaboration could exist with/without money been exchanged. As an agricultural officer our department I would term collaborated and partnered with several FM stations to extend improved agronomic practices to smallholder producers through the station allowing air time (1hour) twice a week and the department providing the technical service or expertise by sending officers to the station.
There was no money exchanged and no documents signed but parties honored what was agreed upon.
The benefit in the collaboration was: the station achieving its corporate social responsibility and the department of agriculture also achieving its main objective of reaching out to high farmers population through radio. As the department had low number of extension agents to reach most farmers but the radio program through the FM made it possible.
Additionally, the department through the collaboration was able to channel and use funds on other relevant activities such as establishing farmer demonstrations.
The department also had other collaboration and partnerships with radio stations by an institution such as Farm Radio International bringing the radio stations and technical staff from the department of agriculture to host and produce programs relevant to smallholder producers’ productivity improvement in Northern and Upper East Regions of Ghana.
In those instances, Farm radio facilitated the linkages, built our capacities and provided some T&T for the staff of the department of agriculture who came to the studio. So you see money was exchanged and all collaborating institutions achieving collective but individual objectives.
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Hello everyone
The second topic this week was about benefits and challenges of collaboration. When working with people you might benefit and also experience some challenges as well.
It is suggested that broadcasters should request collaboration from the heads of communities or institutions. When the agreement is from the top, with both parties understanding the goals of the request, it becomes easier to work with people on the ground. It is all about letting all stakeholders understand that collaboration targets mutual benefits.
Again I will share just one post on benefits:
When both parties keep their side of the bargain, collaboration becomes beneficial. Challenges arise when one partner does not keep up on agreement.
As quoted above, it should be clear from the onset if the collaboration has any monetary benefit. I like what @retlinks said:
Collaborating partners should find ways of dealing with the challenges and find ways of maximizing benefits.
Have a lovely weekend!
My week 2B contribution: Benefits and challenges of collaborating on farmer programs.
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During one of my field works last year in an encleved village called Azi, i happened to discovered during my research that, bed bugs have been dealing with people within that community out of their knowlegde and children were more venerable to this pest and suffered the consequences more than the youths and adults.
In a way to help the community out, i was led to meet the paramount chief through the help of an elder and explained my findings. The chief asked my opinion on how we could eliminate the pest from the community? I answered, educating the people of its harmful effects and how bed bugs can completely be eradicated from their environment would be the best option. -
Now to dessiminate this human assistant program to a wider range, i made connection with two radio stations. One private radio station and one government to both help the public and some farmers in particular who careless habout their sleeping surroundings.
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At the Village square, the people gather one evening to receive teachings on bed bugs which was our main topic. Teachings started after they were all welcome.
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Now, If you did not know, this is an insect called bed bug.
This insect feeds on the blood of warm blooded animals with preference for human blood. The people listening exclaimed hmmmm!. Unlike most other blood sucking insects, these bugs prefer the room as their habitat especially rooms that are airtight, rooms with so many disordered clothings or furniture, beds with dirty bedsheets. Bites from the bugs can cause skin rashes that might result to severe allergic reactions. The insects can also transmit a parasite that causes chagas disease. Their presence can lead to sleeplessness.
To prevent/control these pests of medical significance the following should be practiced at home
- Keep things clean and orderly always in the rooms.
- Regularly wash your bedsheets by soaking them in iziah detergent mixture overnight.
- Keep your room airy and with much sunlight.
- Spray your mattress with mosquito insecticides and sundry for about 5 hours at least once a month.
- Spray your room with peppermint oil or garlic oil or cinnamon oil or eucalyptus oil.
Collaboration Benefits:
The people in that community were very happy because they have discovered what have been draining their little moneys in terms of health care and even killing them out of their own knowledge. Best of it all, they were happy they have acquired knownledge lesson learned.
Collaboration Challenges
- Some elders and traditional herbalist were not happy because, had it been they knew long since that is how the teachings were going to be very interesting, they would have hired me and levy a sum to the people.
- This same manipulators serious warned the people not to meet me for whatever reasons one- on-one or for any further talk except authorised. Since am not a medical doctor but researcher as they defend their point.
- At the radio station, if not all most of the experts (enthomology) kept hi-jacking the interview from broadcasters as our shared resources for week 2 pin-points about how to carry out an interview with experts. Irrespective of how humble the broadcasters manager the interaction, these personalities often use their titles and positions to role out effective collaboration which ought to be a win-win situation to balance the scale of discussion in the world of communication. Even though the wedge is often felt, most of these stakeholders are good intellectuals of the society.
Thanks,
Mike Achanyi
Cameroon Link.
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Happy weekend to everyone in the house, Olusina Motiasan is my name from Ejulenen93.7fm igbodigo,okitipupa,ondo state,Nigeria. I thank God for giving me this opportunity to meet bunch of intellectuals people like Busi,Bfiafor,Yakubu,Martins,Assparadio,Steven ngole,Mike Achanyi to mention but few I thank you all for this great knowledge impacted to me am very grateful in fact I wish we meet physically for another life boosting coursework you people are wonderful
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I will try to reflect what we discussed this week on e- discussion on our program agbeloba(farmers are king) which will comes up by 7pm today.Being a volunteers in a community radio the works are much as for me present as many program up to 10 in a week and anchoring other religious and special programs so I present, produce, reports and castnews it’s also becoming part of me for giving me this opportunity to partake in this e discussion it’s another moral booster so I thank you all
Well coordinated collaborations have no major challenges apart from times when you are translating technical languages into local farmers languages. These days scientists know the need to do that exercise for successful results.
Awesome summaries on benefits of collaborations and challenges on farmer programs.
Some other benefits might include the leveraging on each others strengths and resources, effective utilization of scarce resources ( time, money and human), reduced duplication of interventions/information to same target/audience, trust and relationship building.
Challenges might also include: Not engaging enough to get the buy in of stakeholders before the start of collaboration, not selecting the right caliber of people with the requisite skills and expertise to handle technical issues with a local touch/context and the sudden halt of planned activities due to misunderstanding or low commitment from either party.
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I think that is the greatest challenge of our time, partners feels the media runs on promises
For us, collaboration with some stakeholders has resulted into referals for media Businesses, the stakeholders end up getting us business in talk shows, spots message which may not necessarily be for farmers.
The trust built between us - the media and partners as well as farmers makes it easy for us to work together for a common goal.
We have become source of hope and Development for some farmers
In challenges, some are parasitic in their collaboration with us.
Some go a head to get illicit money from some of their partners claiming they are doing their work minus informing the media, once detected we discontinue the collaboration.
Yes Martin, they are brought by the radio stations to teach about herbal medicine in form of collaboration. But at the same time they sponsor some of those programs to promote their practices which contravenes the broadcasting law of this country; things like witchcraft then deceiving that they can give people riches, fortune etc. The law here is even too weak to reprimand them. They bring in a lot of money for the radio stations here.
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We are equally proud of you! for your time, energy and efforts put in reading the bits shared while stirring our e-discussion on collaboration positively. You will certainly become a moving encyclopedia some day as you keep one acquiring knownledge here and there hoping to meet you some day. Till then see you in week-3. Have a blessed weekend with friends and family.
Rejoice,
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Rashid Muzungyo from Kapchorwa Trinity Radio in Uganda.
To answer the question on the benefits of collaboration, the practice encourages broadcasters to conduct regular consultations with the listeners, extension workers and station managers on production of effective farmer radio programmes.
On the challenges, there are cases of delay in decision making.
Rashid, I think the delay in decision making has always been due to the fact that, the engagement of two parties often involves the meticuleous screening of terms. Besides, other top administrator too must be consulted to approve thego ahead or Not. With the rapid growth and development in technology.
I believe there will certainly come a time some days brocasters and stakeholders would turn to colloaborate without witnessing this challenge of time so called Delays.
Sponsoring is like giving someone money to help them out or as financial assistance or in media’s case paying for airtime so that one/a company/product or organization can promote itself or praise its brand; were as collaboration is a process of 2 or more people work together to accomplish a task, this does not usually involve money but effort and strategy. Teamwork so to say.
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