Fertile Grounds Initiative: Progess Report Reporting periode Jan-Sept 2015

2015 was an exciting year for us. After two years of review we are now off, or better in, the ground. The project, both content wise as organisational and financial, is challenging, but to our view, good progress has been made. We may now claim that FGI is a concept known by our key-stakeholders and that in-field activities are happening. In 2015 the main emphasis was on the implementation of the case studies for proof of principle in Uganda, Ethiopia and Burundi. This succeeded in Ethiopia, is well on its way in Burundi and will be further elaborated in Uganda. Case studies are based on existing projects (host projects) to which supplemental activities are added in line with the FGI process components. This way of working gives the case studies a head start once the host projects are identified and mutual agreement is found. However, the process prior to this phase is sometimes complex and time taking and consequently the development of the case studies is in different phases in the respective countries. In this reporting period work plans were approved for 2 case studies in Ethiopia. In Burundi, a larger newly developed project and an existing WOTRO-ARF project are considered part of FGI. For Uganda, the identification of appropriate new host projects is ongoing while here also one WOTRO-ARF project is considered a case study for FGI. Substantial progress was made on the thematic areas knowledge management and stakeholder networks for which more than 90% of the targets of the M&E guidelines was achieved.